Shadowpuppet
by CammyCape
Summary: There's a lot lying behind the veil of night Emily Roivas never knew about. At least, not until her friend is brutally murdered and she discovers the truth that lies in the dark, whether she wants to or not, where her usefulness decides how long she lives
1. Prologue

PROLOGUE

Author's Note (the boring, technical stuff): This story has been kicking around in my head for a while, and I finally decided to begin posting it in response to a request for a Sebastian LaCroix fic by Lemo on AFF. Think of it as taking place about four years before the events in Bloodlines. You'll see a lot of familiar faces, but a lot of new faces too, because fleshing out the Camarilla, the Sabbat, and everyone else needed doing, or else the plot would have been very boring indeed. This version doesn't contain the graphic naughtiness seen on AFF.

The following sourcebooks were shamelessly, blindly plundered for information where necessary in the creation of this story:

Liber des Goules – the Book of Ghouls (1997, 1998 White Wolf Publishing)

Cities of Darkness volume 2: Berlin and Los Angeles by Night (1997, White Wolf Publishing)

War of Ages: Elysium and the Anarch Cookbook (1998, White Wolf Publishing)

Guide to the Camarilla (1999 White Wolf Publishing)

Guide to the Sabbat (1999 White Wolf Publishing)

Vampire: The Masquerade (2002 White Wolf Publishing)

Prince's Primer (1996 White Wolf Publishing)

Clanbook: Lasombra (1996 White Wolf Publishing)

Time of Thin Blood (1999 White Wolf Publishing)

I've made every effort to stick as closely to the original source material as possible (at least as far as someone who's never actually played the source material), but occasional liberties have been taken for plot purposes. Also, if you see a flat-out mistake, don't worry about reporting it to me. A wizard probably did it. Damn wizards.

_Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most._

_--Bob Dylan_

Midnight in Santa Monica.

Emily Roivas awoke in the darkness of the cold hospital room, her back stiff and protesting from the uncomfortable plastic chair she had contorted herself in next to Angela's beside. She twisted around to see the little travel clock she'd propped up on the nightstand and groaned when she saw the glowing green numbers. While she'd had to pull some pretty heavy theatrics and pleading to get to stay the night, since she was only a co-worker and not family, she hadn't actually intended to fall asleep.

The jacket she'd been using as a blanket slipped to the floor as she stood up with a muffled groan, stretching and kneading the stiff muscles in her lower back. The hospital was completely quiet for the first time since she'd been there, and the silence was golden. No clatter of cart wheels, no footsteps up and down the hallway, no pages over the speaker system. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she shuffled forward.

Eyes not yet adjusted completely to the dark, Emily leaned low over the woman's bed. "Ange?" she whispered, more out of habit and wish than anything else.

There was, of course, no reply.

Two nights ago, Angela Drake had been attacked in her own apartment. A neighbour had heard her screaming sometime after midnight and called the police. For once, the response time had been spectacular, but it had still been too late. By the time they'd arrived, the apartment had been silent, and they'd battered down the door at the neighbour's panicked insistence, to find Angela, poor, broken little Angela, laying unconscious in a spreading pool of her own blood, face a ruined mess, the curtains billowing in the soft night air filtering in through the broken windows.

One of the officers on the scene had been quoted in the morning paper as saying it looked like a pack of dogs had gotten into the place.

It was strange, but Emily wasn't sure what she was angrier about right now. The attack? Or the fact that their boss hadn't even bothered to stop by?

As guilty as Emily felt about her anger towards Rhinebeck Athill, it also made her feel better. Gave her something to focus the laser-hot light of her confusion and bitterness on. She knew he was busy; he was always busy, jetting about non-stop day and night, often only having time to stop by just as she was leaving for the night to check on things.

"How unfortunate." he'd murmured in a vaguely disinterested voice when she'd called to tell him.

"She's lucky to be alive. Sir." Emily had said, stung by the lack of concern. She'd been sitting in the hospital waiting room, perched on the edge of an unsteady stool and clutching the payphone receiver hard enough to make her knuckles white.

"I imagine." Athill had an unctuous, smooth voice that always made her feel as though he was talking circles around her, but at the same time it was oddly soothing. Something about the deep, baritone quality to it, she supposed. "Naturally, you'll be wanting time off. I'm certain I can make do without your assistance for as long as necessary. Of course, Ms Drake is on paid leave until she recovers."

Honestly, it had been more than she'd expected from him. He was always polite, but he'd never struck her as a terribly sympathetic man.

Now, with her hand on the lamp switch, Emily hesitated. She told herself it was because she didn't want to risk disturbing Angela this late, but that was a bald faced lie; Angela hadn't woken up once since the attack. And Emily couldn't bear to see the patchwork of stitches and swollen flesh that was her friend's face right now, made all the more painful by that still-perfect halo of golden blonde hair spread out on her pillow.

The hallway was long and brightly lit, the floor white tiled and the walls painted a relentlessly cheery buttercup yellow that was at least better than the puke-green colour that some of the other hospitals she'd been in had favoured. At the end, directly across from the nurse's station, she remembered, was a series of vending machines. The idea of old Mars Bars, stale Doritoes, or ancient Junior Mints made her stomach revolt, but with the cafeteria closed it was better than nothing. Maybe only marginally. She thought it would have been just about as satisfying to eat the tiny little box of fake orange-flavoured Tic-Tacs in her pocket.

The nurse's station was empty. A stroke of luck, Emily had to think, remembering the broad-faced, unpleasant behemoth of a woman who had been on duty earlier that night. The nametag had said Margaret, but Emily had been unpleasantly reminded of the strange dwellers of Lovecraft's Innsmouth. Margaret had been steadfastly against allowing the younger woman to stay with Angela, but the hospital director had ultimately relented . . . perhaps out of sympathy, but more likely reading potential mutiny in Emily's eyes, the sort that said _Maybe we'll do things your way. But it's not going to be the EASY way. I'm going to make this as difficult and noisy as possible, so be damn sure you really want in for the long haul_.

_You're being mean again, _she chided herself. She ignored it, taking some measure of satisfaction in her pettiness. For the past two days, her patience had been stretched to the limit. Waiting for Angela's family to arrive, Emily had spent almost all her time at the hospital. A great deal of that time had also been spent under police scrutiny. An endless parade of wood-faced detectives, all wanting to know about everything and anything.

_How did you meet Ms Drake? You said you moved here from Arizona last year?_

_I see, and the workload was split between the two of you at the office, yes?_

_How did that make you feel? Did you think you weren't getting paid enough, maybe, not enough hours or responsibility? Did you ever express such to Ms Drake?_

_I'm not implying anything, Ms Roivas. Tell us again where you were the previous night. And, may I stress, that any detail you may have previously omitted out of, say, forgetfulness might be prudent to our investigation._

Emily would have liked to have found the magic phrase that would have made them leave her alone. They seemed to find it suspicious that she was staying with Angela until her family arrived when the two were little more than friendly coworkers. Emily wasn't quite sure why herself, except for perhaps Angela's sweet, friendly smile, a friend in an otherwise strange town.

"You should not take it so seriously. I have seen these things before." the last night nurse, a remarkably lovely young Indian woman, had said. The nametag pinned to the breast of her crisp uniform had read Mridula. "They wish only to find the people who did this to your friend. It is simply . . . procedure."

Procedure. She snorted as she plunked money into a soda machine, then knelt to retrieve the can that tumbled noisily into the slot. Emily knew all about _procedure_.

Sipping from the can, Emily's gaze shifted to the left and she regarded her reflection in the corridor windows. It was a pale, ghostly image of herself, and it only heightened her sense of unreality that night. She was a strikingly pretty young woman, but the last few days had stamped their mark on her. Her already pale complexion was starting to look a little sickly from lack of proper sleep and worry. There were shadows underneath her dark eyes that made her face look narrower and more pointed than it was, and the curve of her lips had lost much of their good humour. Her dark brown hair was starting to come free of the ponytail she'd shoved it up in yesterday, and the jeans and plain black t-shirt she'd thrown on before coming to the hospital were now hopelessly rumpled.

It made her think of Athill again as she walked slowly back to the room. If he had seen her looking like she did now, she knew the familiar, crimped look of displeasure would cross his face. He had a fairly strict sense of style and dress he wanted to uphold at his offices, and both she and Angela always wore matching pencil-sharp black skirts that came to just above their knees, fitted white silk blouses, sheer black hose, and black heels. If she had ever shown up for work looking like she did now, he would have shut the door in her face without a word. At the moment, she wouldn't have disagreed with him.

Just outside the doorway to Angela's room, Emily paused. In the uncommon stillness of the hospital, she could hear something. Something nearby. It was a sort of frenzied shuffling that made her think, oddly enough, of someone wrapped up in a sheet and fighting to get out. After a moment, she realised the sound was actually coming from Angela's own room.

Just for a moment, Emily allowed herself to hope.

The doctors were quiet about Angela's unconsciousness, and it didn't take a medical diploma to read the subtext in their carefully neutral responses to Emily's questions. _They were wrong_, Emily thought, heart suddenly beating fast as she hurried into the room, _they were wrong, she must be awake, thank you, God, Jesus, whoever, just let her be . . . _

Something cold gripped her heart, some icy premonition that strangled her hopeful greeting before it could make it past her lips. It was too late to stop her hand, however, reaching along the wall, and as she flicked on the lights, she saw everything.

The soda can slipped from her suddenly nerveless fingers, and it seemed to take a very long time to fall indeed. Long enough for Emily to take in the hunched shape over the bed, that gray and terrible flesh rippling with muscles in all the wrong places. Long enough for her to take in the brilliant, fire-truck red splashed all over the walls, the floor, the privacy curtain – the fluorescent lighting was unforgiving. She could hear it, too, she realised in a distant sort of way; chuffling, snuffling wetly, something thick tearing, and the sound of Angela's feet drumming erratically on the mattress.

The sudden light in the room made the creature hunched over Angela scream. No, that wasn't right. It _howled. _Emily was aware of a raw, stinging strain in her throat as she screamed herself, but she couldn't hear it. The sound the beast was making swallowed her voice completely.

In the hallway, Emily didn't pause, instead choosing a direction at random and bolting down it. The silence that had seemed so comforting and refreshing to her only minutes ago now seemed ominous, pregnant with some terrible monstrosity. The idea that those howls, her scream, hadn't brought someone, anyone running to investigate was impossible. She passed partially open doors as she ran, and nothing moved in the darkness within.

It was, at least in part, her blind terror that saved her. She lost her balance as she sprinted madly around the corner, pitching forward with an inarticulate cry. She took two huge running steps forward trying to regain her footing, only partially recovered, and landed on her hands and knees at the same time as a dark shape went hurtling over her head, close enough to ruffle her hair with the wind of it's passing. She caught a glimpse of an impossibly animalistic face, red eyes glaring hatefully back at her before it crashed through a set of swinging double doors ahead of her. It howled again in a very human sort of rage as she heard a tremendous clatter of metal, and something heavy hitting the floor. Eyes very wide now, she scrambled to her feet and finally saw the door on her left, and the small sign marking it as the stairwell.

_Lucky. _Emily thought as she scrambled for the stairway, yanking the door open_. So lucky, oh my GOD Angela!_

She didn't bother with the steps. Emily simply vaulted down the last set with a breezy sort of grace she knew she would never again be able to reproduce and hit the ground running.

She was making too much noise now. Not just the slap of her shoes on the concrete, but she hit the door at the bottom full force, making it rattle in it's frame, and spent a few frantic seconds pawing at the handle in the dark before she was able to finally snatch it open. She bolted through it, hearing it rebound off the tiled wall with a clamor, and then she was darting down the hallway towards the distant red glow of the exit sign.

The idea of being fit had never really occurred to her before. Fit was when you could fit into your favourite pair of jeans and afford the whipped cream on your iced coffee. Fit was looking good in your heels and your pantyhose, being able to take the stairs without puffing for breath.

Somehow, the idea of fit as being able to run for one's life had never connected in her head before.

Already a stitch had claimed her left side, turning her run into a desperate, lopsided gallop. Her gasping sounded very loud in the silence. She was having to actually force herself to pull in every burning breath, and she wondered in a detached sort of way how long her terror could actually carry her for.

It happened so quickly that Emily never actually even registered that she had slipped and was falling until she hit the floor, and she hit it hard enough, the back of her skull cracking loudly against it, that white stars suddenly bloomed in her vision. Every muscle in her body seemed to tense up like a block of wood all at once and then relax, all the strength leaving her body in one wheezy, shocked gasp.

Something in her head was screaming, screaming at her to get up, to keep moving, but for one terrifying moment her body simply wouldn't respond. Her head lolled limply to one side, pressing her cheek against the cool floor, and her mouth gaped open, sucking in air. She couldn't seem to get enough of it, great heaving breaths that whooped on the way in. The pain in her head was phenomenal, deafening, and every movement seemed to send the floor canting and twisting beneath her, making her stomach roil in rebellion.

_You get up! It's coming for you, and you get up now, Emily, or it'll have you too!_

With great difficulty, she managed to flop limply over onto her belly and slowly get her arms and knees braced under her. When she pushed herself to her feet, the hall seemed to turn sharply to one side, and her legs carried her almost bonelessly into something wide and hard pressed against the wall. She clutched at it for support, baring her teeth without realising it. Her fingers skittered over the surface, felt cool glass, then hard plastic, and several rows of rounded things that could only be buttons.

_Vending machine._

Despite the jangle of her nerves, even with what she'd witnessed back in the hospital room, she was shocked to find that her terror had left her. It was as though the fall had knocked it all out of her and all she'd had to replace it with was cotton, leaving her feeling numbed and confused.

Without really thinking about it, she wiped clumsily at her ears, instinctively searching for the wetness that would have meant she was bleeding and concussed.

And that was when it hit her from behind.

Which was ridiculous, because her back had been to the wall, but wherever it came from, it hit her with all the force of a wrecking ball. She felt something huge and heavy land on her back, sending her crashing forward into the floor.

She couldn't breathe. The weight of the thing was tremendous, crushing her to the floor. It shifted it's weight, leaning forward, and Emily felt something give inside her with a shockingly brittle, easy snapping sound. A wet, angry snarling filled her ears and she would have screamed if she'd had the breath. Reflexively, she threw an elbow back, felt it crack against hard bone. The creature howled, more in anger than pain it sounded like, long and sharp enough that it rung inside her skull. It pulled back, through, at least enough for her to be able to roll over before it was on her again, and then she was shrieking as she saw it, really saw it.

It was a man, and yet it wasn't. Could a man have those impossibly wide jaws, that vicious glitter of sharp teeth like broken glass? Could a man have eyes like two red-hot bolts slammed deep into that twisted, broad, flat face? Even in the dark she could make out the pallid colour of it's flesh, the tattered rags hanging from it's bulky frame, and she shrieked like a fireball when it siezed her by the shoulders and began to shake her, claws sinking deep into muscle. She felt her head bounce repeatedly off the floor and thought that the thing was actually i_laughing/i _now, laughing as she screamed at it, fists flailing uselessly.

And then it released her, briefly, only so it's hands, those terrible, strong hands, could close about her throat and begin to squeeze.

It was too much.

The night. The creature. The injuries she'd already sustained. Black roses began to bloom in her vision as the vice-like pressure on her throat increased. She scrabbled at it's hands, but they didn't so much as move an inch as she clawed at them. It's flesh was cold.

Her last thought, as the creature's head snapped up and the door at the end of the hallway crashed open:

_Maybe I went crazy. That wouldn't be so bad. Anything would be better than this._

Everything went black.

Voices, in the haze.

_Is she dead?_

_No . . . not yet, anyway. Damn unlucky for her if you ask me._

_Which, if you'll recall, I didn't. It's better for us, anyway. We lost the other one, so we couldn't have gone back empty handed._

_Says you. I'm not afraid of him._

_Then either you're a liar or a fool._

_Hey, whatever, man. At least I'm not some boot licker._

_Yes, one of your many redeeming qualities, I'm sure. Bring the girl. If you're as brave as you say, I'll let you have the honor of presenting her . . . and telling him where the other one went._

For a long time, silence.

Then, something warm. Red sweetness sliding down her throat.

She didn't dream.


	2. Chapter 1

ONE

_Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will._

_-- Frederick Douglass_

Although his expression remained calm, inwardly Sebastian LaCroix was seething.

His movements as he strode quickly down the hallway were brisk and agitated. He yanked repeatedly at the already straight cuffs of his crisp white dress shirt, giving the lapels of his dark blue dinner jacket the same treatment. Even the sound of his own shoes on the inlaid stone floor chipped away at his nerves tonight.

While the rest of the Venture tower teemed with activity – the security, the legitimately employed workers of the LaCroix foundation, other Kindred – Sebastian's own penthouse level was nearly always deserted except for himself. In stark contrast to the lower floors, the penthouse was an exercise in the sort of luxury and architecture he'd known early on after his embrace in France. Admittedly, it was perhaps a little sterile and dated; the long columns, the tall, French white windows, the soft cream paint and white crown moldings. Even the furniture was old, made with rich polished heavy walnut wood, and regence period carved chairs.

It was his. All of it. Hard-won after years, decades, _centuries_ of careful political and financial planning. He ran his hand over the velvety surface of a polished and ornately carved sideboard as he passed, but tonight it gave him no comfort. Everything had _not_ gone according to plan, and now he was going to have to do an elaborate song and dance routine to the already suspicious Kindred of the community to keep things quiet. It had only been a year since the Camarilla had been reinstated in Los Angeles, and times were volatile enough without any added . . . stress.

It had seemed like such a simple plan, and Sebastian still didn't understand how things had gone so very wrong. The Drake woman had survived the initial attack by the Sabbat by pure luck, which had first alerted him to her presence. The circumstances had been so unusual, even for the Sabbat's mindless destruction, that it had piqued his suspicions immediately. The Nosferatu had worked remarkably fast, even for them, unearthing enough information for him to make the decision to take both Angela Drake and Emillia Roivas into Camarilla custody until he could decide what to do with them. Their situation was . . . unique, to say the least, but the fact that they had both been unaware of that should have made things that much easier.

Of course, Sebastian hadn't anticipated that the Sabbat would strike again so soon. He'd hoped that they had known even less than he about what Rhinebeck Athill had been using his two kine office assistants for. And maybe they had. It hadn't stopped them from moving to finish the job before two of the Camarilla's agents could arrive, however. Now Angela Drake was gone – presumably dead from the aftermath in her hospital room – and the other woman who had had the misfortune to be present, well . . .

Unlike other members of his Clan, Sebastian had never seen the appeal of creating Ghouls to do one's work. Mercurio had been a necessity when things had begun to deteriorate in Santa Monica decades ago, but he was certainly far from perfect. Whenever possible, Sebastian had sought other, anonymous donors to provide the blood necessary for the Ghoul's upkeep; he'd never seen the benefit in having a snivelling sycophant at his heels at all hours of the night. Besides, as last night had been such a wonderful example of, if you wanted something done right, you were better off doing it yourself.

The simple fact was that the Roivas woman had been very close to death when Arthur and Donovan had brought her to him, her injuries worsening over the trip from Santa Monica. The attack at the hospital had left her with massive internal injuries, not unlike those she might have sustained if she'd fallen from a great height . . . or had something dropped on her from one. Even as a last resort, Sebastian hadn't been certain a dose of Kindred blood would do much for her. But he hadn't been willing to risk allowing someone else to give her the blood on the off chance she survived, someone else who might have used that new hold to extract whatever Rhinebeck had used her for . . .

_Nothing but annoyances. Why must everything be difficult when it comes to dealing with the kine?_

Outside the broad, double doors to his office, Sebastian paused and took another moment to compose himself before pushing through. The Kindred who had been looking out the massive windows turned to face him as he entered.

The Ventrue primogen was a tall woman and thin as a rail, her small breasts poking at the silk material of the sea-green, shimmering blouse she wore. Her face was thin and angular; not unlovely, but there was a sort of terse peevishness about it even with the polite smile she wore. The smattering of freckles across her pale face should have made her look softer, more girlish, but there was a hardness in her hazel eyes, bright behind the lenses of her small round glasses, that made her cold. Her face was framed by an explosion of frizzy, bright red hair that stood out from her head in a sort of fiery corona.

"Ms O'Malley." Stepping closer, her took her proferred hand and raised it automatically to his lips, more out of common courtesy than any real affection. She smelled, very faintly, of some sort of dried flowers and antibiotic soap, and he kept himself from grimacing at the chemical smell. "I apologise for the wait."

"Oh, it's quite allright, Your Majesty." Molly said. Her voice was pleasant enough, but Sebastian had good reason to suspect what might lie behind her Empirical form of address. She'd never actively opposed him before, but he knew it was only a matter of time. Contrary to popular belief, most people did not change so drastically after their Embrace, and he believed that even when she had been alive, there had always been a ticking calculator behind Molly's breast rather than an actual heart. "I imagine you're very busy. I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me at all."

"Yes, well, one must take the time to address the concerns of one's peers, yes?" Sebastian muttered. Actually, he'd put it off as long as he could. Whatever Molly had been after him for an audience about these past two weeks couldn't be good. She kept her own company more than anything else so much that he'd come to be wary whenever she came seeking 'help' or 'counsel'.

Of course, he had an idea what she wanted this time. Due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, Molly had also been made privy to the Rhinebeck Athill situation at the same time Sebastian had. It was likely she was after leverage for her silence on top of whatever else she'd come about. But then, what else was new? He had always thought, privately, that the Primogen were little more than buzzards circling overhead, watching for any sign of feebleness.

"Using an unknowing mortal woman." Molly said with a tinkling little laugh. "It's actually rather clever. If you had asked me, I wouldn't have said Rhinebeck was capable of it. Of course, that's the problem, isn't it? We never suspected a thing."

Sebastian moved to his desk, head down while he adjusted his tie to hide the bitterness in his eyes. He hadn't missed the implication.

There had been rumours of a Lasombra in the area, of course, but then, times being what they were, Sebastian and the Primogen had given the idea little thought. With the ever increasing numbers of the Thin-Bloods, Kindred were seeing portents of disaster everywhere, and the Sabbat was no different. Above all else, he hadn't expected it to be Rhinebeck Athill; the last Sebastian had heard, the Lasombra had been forced eastward, perhaps all the way to Florida.

Apparently not, and by the looks of the now-vacated offices and estate Sebastian had looked into for the last few nights, Rhinebeck had been at his work for some time. If only they'd been aware of him sooner. There had been precious little information for the Nosferatu to piece together, and it had only pertained to the two mortal women. As to Rhinebeck's real motives, Sebastian hadn't a clue. He did know, however, that the man was by no means out of the picture. It would have been too simple.

"One of the antitribu . . the Lasombra, no less. The Anarchs would have a field day." Molly murmured.

"The Anarchs have no reason to know, now, do they, Molly?" Sebastian replied, his voice deceptively low and pleasant.

"Of course not, Your Grace." Molly paused before changing subject. "I brought Ginerva with me as you asked, but I still don't understand why you wanted to see her."

"As long as Ms Roivas is going to be staying here, she needs to be made aware of the proper customs and society rules of what she is and where she stands." He gave a short, mirthless laugh. "Believe me when I say I have neither time nor desire to play teacher after the last few nights. I thought Ginerva's servitor would be more than sufficient."

"Is that wise?" Molly asked. "Martin is perhaps one of the more competent Ghouls I've known, but . . . well, Ginerva isn't really . . . " She trailed off, raising an eyebrow meaningfully.

As far as Toreador went, Ginerva Wilde had been one of the least infuriating. She'd been a musician in life, and as such tended to favour song and musical talent rather than simple physical beauty, and had less of the Clan's tendency to become mesmerised by examples of such. For a while, she had been one of the Clan's few level-headed members, a voice of reason and popular amidst even the younger and more hot-headed Kindred. But then, of course, there had been that bothersome business last year with the girl, and ever since . . .

"Well, regardless, Ginerva is one of the few Kindred I feel I can trust at the moment." He met Molly's eyes and returned her smile with one as equally bland and icy of his own.

The corners of Molly's mouth crimped slightly, but that cool, collected look didn't slip. "Of course. Trust is important." She turned her head to frown in the direction of the doors, arms folded across her breasts. "Would you like me to go see her up?"

"Please. While you do, I'll go collect our newest little commodity. Let's get this nonsense over with."

_Coming. _

_It's coming._

_Got to . . . _

_Got to . . . run!_

Emily's eyes opened with a gasp that was close to becoming a scream.

Even as deeply as she had been sleeping, there was no moment of confusion and disorientation, no forgetting what had happened. It dropped on her full force; the blood on the walls, the thing hunched over her friend, then pursuing her through the corridors. The way it had leaped on her, and the fog that had swallowed her consciousness.

For a moment, she didn't move. She lay rigidly where she was, eyes snapping frantically around the room. The nightmare she'd been having had dropped away like a discarded scrap of cloth from her mind, but her body still seemed trapped in it. Even though she didn't remember the details, she knew she'd been hunted. The pounding of her heart and adrenaline surging through her made it difficult to lie still, but she was paralysed. She felt like a rabbit must when it saw the shadow of a hawk overhead.

Nervously, she licked away the sweat stippling her upper lip. She didn't recognise the room she was in, but it didn't look like any hospital she'd ever been in. Even excusing the massive bed she was lying in and the silken sheets that had never graced the interior of any hospital, the room itself was too extravagant. The walls were panelled in some dark, rich wood that looked as smooth as butter, and the light fixtures were discrete sconces in frosted glass globes. It looked like something out of a Jane Austen novel, or at the very least some tawdry and poorly written period bodice ripper.

More importantly, it was empty aside from herself.

Emily didn't call out as she climbed slowly out of bed. She was too wary for that. Her clothes were nowhere to be found, and she dropped to the plush red carpet to peer hopefully under the bed but was unsurprised to find nothing. She yanked the top-most sheet from the bed and wrapped it awkwardly around her nakedness, gathering handfulls of the slipperly silk to keep it from falling down. Moving lightly, she pressed her ear to the door and held her breath, listening. Nothing. Nobody. At least, nobody she could hear.

One wall was dominated by a large set of burgundy, heavy curtains, and she twitched back a corner of them, still clutching the bed sheet around herself.

Outside, the sun had set. Or maybe it hadn't yet risen. But more importantly, she didn't recognise the cityscape she saw spread out before her. A seemingly endless sea of blinking lights stretching off into the distance, the swollen dark sky dotted with the silhouettes of dozens of skyscrapers. Her mouth went dry at the realisation that the unfamiliarity went farther than just the room she'd woken up in.

_They took me away. Somewhere. Who did it? Was it who attacked Angela? Do monsters keep penthouse suites for their midnights snacks?_

Emily raked both hands back through her hair as she paced restlessly, trying to slow the frantic beating of her heart. It would do no good to panic, especially not when she didn't know the whole situation.

_After all, does this place look like a hostage situation with you? Do you think they'd be likely to serve you shackles with your scones at a place like this?_

Her nerves were still on high alert, however, and she knew there had to be a reason for it. Not just what she had seen – or not seen – last night, but something about this whole place was ringing poorly with her.

_Maybe you had some sort of nervous breakdown._ Her mind whispered suddenly. _Just snapped. Went crazy, bibbledy. No rational person sees what you think you saw. Maybe this is some fancy place for you to convalesce in. Mom and Dad could afford it, they wouldn't want to see you wrapped up in some dirty old loony bin . . . _

Now there was an unpleasant thought.

The closet set into the far wall didn't have her clothes in it, but at the moment she was perfectly willing to pillage from someone else, especially when they all looked to be close to her size. All of the items were more than a little high-end; as she quickly yanked a soft, red silk blouse over her head, she actually felt a moment of guilt at the rough treatment the garment was receiving. Likewise for the straight, sailor-cut black trousers and the soft, stylish black jacket she threw on over it all.

_Yes, and you can apologise to your potential captor and rapist in a nice, thoughtfully worded letter if it comes to that. Right now, we're getting out of here_.

It struck her, as she shuffled awkwardly to push her feet into a pair of plain black shoes without untying the laces, that she was moving far too smoothly than she should. She remembered, now, the weight of that creature upon her the previous night, the strange snapping she'd heard coming from inside herself, and the blinding pain. It was possible she'd imagined it in her panicked state, but she didn't think so. She didn't have time to speculate, however, not when there were so many other pressing things to contend with, and she was just reaching for the doorknob when it swung open and a man stepped through.

He wasn't a tall man, maybe only a few inches taller than she was, but his tremendous self possession made him seem to tower over her. He was pale, impossibly pale, so that the planes of his face seemed to have been carved from marble. Something about the pursed line of his lips, the square curve of his jaw, put her in mind of old portraits she'd seen of European nobility. His short, burnished blonde hair was swept and combed into perfect order. It was his eyes that held her most, though; pale, pale blue, arrogant but amazingly intense.

"Aren't you going to thank me?" he said after a beat when she only stared at him. His voice was smooth and articulate, the sort of enunciation and faint European inflection that only came with good breeding, or a lot of lessons. "Surely you have sufficient manners to feel grateful towards the host who saw fit to save you from the situation you'd gotten yourself into."

Emily realised she'd been gaping at him and forced herself to swallow, taking several quick steps back. She could see an empty hallway behind him, but he was standing in such a way that she couldn't have slipped past him easily. "Who are you?" she demanded, pushing a confidence and fire she didn't feel into her voice. "Where am I?"

"My name is Sebastian LaCroix." He moved towards her and she slipped around to the other side of the bed to keep it between them. She thought he looked vaguely amused. "I know who you are, Emily Roivas. I brought you here to recover after that unpleasant business." He paused. "I must say your lack of gratitude is slightly disappointing." There was something mocking in his voice that she didn't like.

"Unpleasant." Emily echoed. "What do you know about that?" A new thought occurred to her, and she bristled. "What happened at the hospital? Did you have something to do with that?"

"Only in the most roundabout way." LaCroix said. He ran a fingertip along one of the bedposts and inspected it with a faint frown. "I'd intended to remove you both much sooner, but, well . . . "

"Well, what?" Emily demanded. She shifted her position until she was facing the door. Something here was terribly wrong, and she needed to be ready to move. Whoever this man was, he wasn't making any sense. "Tell me what's going on!

His laughter cut her off, surprising her. When he smiled, it was more of a smirk, a condescending twist of the lips. "You really have no idea, do you. Well, that's only to be expected. We work hard to keep it a secret, after all." He paused, then added, almost to himself in a vaguely disgusted tone, "_I_ work hard."

"Kidnapping and murder pays for suits like that and places like this, huh?" Emily shot back. "What are you talking about? Who's 'we'?"

"Vampires, of course, Ms Roivas." And he smiled at her, really smiled for the first time although it didn't touch his eyes. She barely noticed. She was too busy staring at the short, sharp fangs gleaming with those perfect white teeth.

For a moment, she only gaped at him. Then she laughed, a high, derisive sound. "You're crazy." Emily hissed. "I mean, really, extraordinarily crazy. Wow."

"Is that so? Tell me. After what you saw in the hospital that night, what would that make you?"

"It makes me someone who's had a very stressful day and someone who doesn't go around filing her teeth into points because she's read too much Anne Rice bullshit." It was a small thing, but the little profanity seemed to fan the flames of defiance in her. The guy was crazy, absolutely batshit, pardon the pun, and it made her at once more confident and more afraid. Her voice rose. "I don't know who the hell you think you are, but you're going to be locked away for a damn long time. Maybe if you're lucky someone will bring you a nice cape to wear with your straight jacket, you crazy son of a --"

"Stay calm." LaCroix spoke the words in a flat, low, tone, but Emily gasped and recoiled as though he'd struck her. The words seemed to reverberate in her skull, ringing and expanding to push every other thought from her mind. For an instant, all she could see were his eyes, hard and cold, and she felt a desperate desire to do anything she could, say anything she could, to please him. Something inside her screamed in fear and defiance, but she couldn't act on it. "Stay calm, and listen and accept what I'm about to tell you."

And he talked. And she listened.

She took it . . . poorly.

It was the strangest sensation she'd ever experienced. She had an idea that she should probably be going insane right about then, and perhaps she already had. Would a sane person be swallowing what he was feeding her like it was honey?

Vampires. Her boss, Mr Athill, had been one of them, and had used both herself and Angela for . . . something. LaCroix wasn't clear to her on what, and she couldn't ask, because then he was telling her about Ghouls. About what SHE was now. As he described the process, what he'd done, what her future would be like, Emily felt the warmth slowly drain from her body. He was still talking, but she wasn't listening. She was remembering something from last night, some fragment of a dream drifting back at her. Cool skin against her lips, and something hot and wet sliding down her throat and racing through her body like the world's most potent whisky, lighting her nerves on fire.

"I'm . . . not human anymore?" Emily had to fight the sudden urge to whirl around and stare at her reflection in the mirror, inspect herself for horns or fangs. She felt sick.

"Something more. But something less than the Kindred." he added. He wasn't looking at her, instead making a show of studying the glittering watch on his left wrist.

"And I don't suppose you're going to tell me what you mean when you say Rhinebeck Athill was using me."

"Because you don't need to know." LaCroix said with a trace of irritation. "You are, as the expression goes, on a need to know basis. And I say this is not one of the things you need to know, Ms Roivas."

Even with the command he'd given her earlier, Emily could feel the first faint stirrings of anger. It was like a serpent coiling inside her. "And what gives you the right to decide what I do and do not need to know?" For the first time, there was a sharpness to her voice, something demanding, and as soon as she heard it she saw his shoulders tense up angrily.

"Because you belong to me now." LaCroix responded simply, finally looking up. Emily took a step back before she could help herself. There was something so alien, so unreal in his eyes, that she might have turned and fled if not for that pulling in her gut.

When she didn't respond, didn't argue, he turned and moved to the door, holding it open with an expectant, impatient expression. She hesitated only briefly before going through it into the long hallway beyond, skirting around him as much as she could. He gave her an arch look so she knew her avoidance hadn't gone unnoticed. "Unlike the beast who attacked you in the hospital, Ms Roivas, I think you'll find that I am much less a monster than the stigma attached to my condition implies. If you do as you're asked, when I ask it, you'll get out of this unscathed and you'll see your home that much more quickly."

_He's lying._

The thought came out of nowhere, and in an instant Emily knew it was true. This man had no intention of ever letting her see her home or her family again, and it was like a slow blossom of ice opening up in her innards. She couldn't do anything other than follow him, however. Not yet, anyway. She kept her expression blank as she trailed behind him at as big a distance as she thought she could get away with, but she had to move at an almost-run to keep up from him. He was walking, but he moved so quickly every time he turned a corner she nearly lost him.He strode through a set of wide-double doors, and Emily suddenly found herself in a tall, sparsely furnished room with the same lavish decor, occupied by two women.

They looked to be conversing quietly by the windows, but looked up at the entrance. The closest one was a tall, red-headed with the most avaricious eyes Emily had ever seen.

The other woman was petite and pale – if the few other vampires Emily had seen all shared the latter attribute, then this woman's skin was as white as new-fallen snow. The contrast between that and the perfect, lustrous black of her hair, cut in a short, sleek, stylish bob, was jarring. The makeup she wore was sparse, but her gray eyes were lined with black, and her lipstick was so dark a red that it might as well have been black, too. She had an oval, sweet face, her lips plump and sensual and curved in a very faint smile, and she was dressed in a long, sweeping, formal black dress, a white silk shawl draped over her shoulders.

The red haired woman moved forward, walking with an easy, enviable grace that was really more flow than stride. "Molly O'Malley." LaCroix said, and Emily didn't know if he was greeting the woman, or introducing her for Emily's benefit.

She extended one thin, long fingered hand, and for a moment Emily was seized by a bizarre but powerful urge to fall to her knees and kiss it.

Instead of offering to shake hands, however, she stroked the top of Emily's head as though she were a dog. Her fingers slid through Emily's hair to scratch her nails across her scalp, and Emily shivered, though the sensation was far from pleasant. "You've caused us a great deal of trouble." Her voice was pleasant, with a faint accent that made Emily think of Scotland, but without the good cheer that usually accompanied it. If someone else's voice with the same accent would've conjured images of boisterous fun, Molly's only brought to mind cold, dark moors in the dead of night.

"She's been made aware." LaCroix said curtly.

"I haven't." Emily said, a tinge of defiance in her voice. She forced herself not to wilt under the force of his forbidding gaze. She hated that he looked at her that way, like a king regarding some supplicant or unimportant serf. "It's true. You haven't . . . what was that creature last night? Where's Angela? What did you mean about Mr Athill?" Now that she had broken the ice covering her mind, the questions were pouring out.

"Angela Drake is dead." Molly said coolly. "We only saw what was left after the attack, but you witnessed it. Or do you think someone could survive that?"

"I would have said that was impossible before tonight. But if vampires exist, then why the hell not?" Emily tried to keep the bridling anger out of her voice and was only partially successful.

The tall vampire only arched an eyebrow. Her expression was vaguely reminiscent of a parent watching a child throw a tantrum. "Indeed." she murmured, but didn't offer any further information.

"I don't . . . I just don't understand what you want from me." Emily knew she should be more upset, more frightened, but the command LaCroix had given her to be calm was apparently still in place. She could feel the panic inside her somewhere, like wings beating behind a locked door, but she couldn't reach it. It was maddening, like an itch she couldn't scratch.

"You're going to make yourself useful to us." The tall vampire leaned down to her, and despite the pleasantness in her voice, and despite her resolve Emily found herself recoiling. She thought she glimpsed something under that urbane smile, some shadow in those green eyes, the shape of something terrible beneath her face. "Which means, you're going to do whatever we ask you to, because it would make us happy. Aren't you?"

"I . . . I . . . " Without thinking why, Emily looked instinctively towards LaCroix. His expression was completely neutral, but she thought she saw something forbidding in his eyes. " . . . yes. Yes, of course . . . ma'am."

"Such manners." Molly smiled again, but her eyes continued to tick over Emily's face, cool and calculating.

"Ginerva," Sebastian said, moving around his desk, "Ms O'Malley and I have things we need to discuss. Would you -- ?"

"Oh, yes, darling." The black haired woman spoke for the first time. She had a surprisingly low voice, like smoke and honey. "I'm sure Martin won't mind at all."

"Have her back before dawn, then."

"Won't mind what? Martin?" Emily was trying not to sound panicked, but she didn't think she was doing a good job of it. She had never felt so unsure of herself, so out of her depth, in all of her life. LaCroix had already turned away, and Molly was ignoring her. The only person still looking at her was Ginerva. The vampire's face was slightly sympathetic as she beckoned.

At the doorway, Emily hesitated. She didn't know why she looked back. LaCroix was standing with his back to her, running a pale hand along the papers laid out on his desk. The sleek cap of his perfectly groomed hair gleamed under the lights, almost seeming to invite the touch of her hand. She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry, that panic threatening in her throat again. All she wanted was to go to him, just to be near him, to do something that would garner a favourable look or bit of praise from him, and she didn't know why. She'd never felt this way before, so desperate to please.

_What did you do to me? Damn you, what the hell did you turn me into? You're not even human! Who gave you the right . . . ?_

"Come along, darling. I'll take care of you, don't worry." Ginerva placed a hand on Emily's shoulder and steered her gently but firmly from the room.

The man standing next to the elevator was of average height and average looks. His dark blonde hair was messy in a way that Emily had always thought of as starving-artist-chic, swept back from his forehead and looking as though it had been combed into place that morning, but had suffered a strong wind since then. A pair of small, round librarian's glasses sat on his straight nose, the reflection from the light playing in them and obscuring his plain blue eyes. He was dressed casually in jeans and a soft, light blue sweater rolled up his forearms, but even with his rumpled appearance, he somehow impressed Emily as a serious, no-nonsense person.

"Martin," Ginerva said in warm tones as they drew near, "look who I've brought."

"I can see, Ms Wilde." The man's voice was brisk but soft. "This is Mr LaCroix's newest -- "

"Her name is Emily." Ginerva overrode him easily. Her eyes flicked in Emily's direction, and Emily had the sudden idea that she had kept the man from using the term "ghoul" to spare her feelings. Emily felt a sudden rush of gratitude towards the woman. "Darling, this is my dear associate, Martin Chatham. You're going to be spending time with him this evening."

They shook hands perfunctorily, murmuring bland greetings. Emily was too busy trying to digest the night's events in a way that would keep her from coming unhinged, and Martin simply looked distracted and vaguely put upon. He stood to one side as they stepped into the elevator like a doorman, pressing the button for the ground floor.

"Aren't you precious." Ginerva sighed, running her fingertips down the side of Emily's face. While not "cold as ice", her touch was cool enough to be unsettling. The smile she wore was kind, but her eyes were distant. "You remind me of my Natasha."

"Natasha is dead, Ms Wilde." Martin said quietly. His tone was gentle, but firm, and when Emily dared a glance at him, his expression was stony.

"Even so." Ginerva murmured, apparently nonplussed. "You don't need to be afraid of me, darling. I won't hurt you. Martin, have I ever harmed a hair on your head?"

"No, Ms Wilde."

"There. You see?" She smiled benevolently, one hand smoothing the hair on the back of Emily's head. It was a motherly gesture, but Emily still felt her nerves prickling. However calm, however gentle Ginerva might seem, she was still the same as the others. Both LaCroix, the woman in his office, and the creature who had attacked the hospital.

" . . . I don't know what I'm supposed to do." Emily said at length.

"Why, nothing, Emily." Ginerva sounded genuinely surprised, giving Emily a sidelong look. "Didn't our Prince tell you? You're going to spend some time with Martin, and he's going to help teach you all about the rules of our society."

"As much as I can in the few hours before dawn, anyway." Martin murmured, glancing at a plain silver watch on his wrist. "His Majesty doesn't give much time to work with, does he?" He paused, and something in his eyes seemed to soften slightly when he looked at Emily again. It was, she would later think, the look of a veteran taking in a soldier newly drafted into a war. "How are you taking all this?"

Emily didn't see any point in lying. "I was just thinking how I used to have a life."

If she was looking for comfort, for support, Martin didn't have it for her. "Yes." he said simply. "We all did."


	3. Chapter 2

TWO

It was a lot to take in.

Sitting across from Martin at their tiny table in the crowded bar, even with everything she'd heard and seen, Emily was having difficulty keeping the incredulous look that wanted to bloom on her face away. He'd been talking for the better part of two hours, and while at first she'd interjected questions, now she could only listen in mounting amazement.

_This is still crazy. So crazy._ Emily thought. Then, I_'ll never be able to remember it all._

Some of it must have shown on her face, for he smiled slightly as he took a sip from a glass of water; the only thing he'd ordered since they'd come in. "It's a lot to handle, isn't it? The Masquerade does a good job."

"I just . . . you really believe all this?"

"You don't?" Martin asked, then, answering his own question, "You haven't seen the things I have."

"I saw that thing in the hospital." Emily murmured, shivering at the thought.

"Sabbat, most likely. Brutes with less sense and tact than God gave a coyote." Martin shrugged. "There's worse than they out there."

Emily gave him a doubtful look, but chose not to press the issue. She felt she'd had about all she could handle for one night. "So then Gin -- . . . Ms Wilde and Mr LaCroix are friends."

"As much as they can be, I suppose. As much as anyone can be in their positions."

But Emily wasn't listening. An idea had occurred to her. "If you . . . if you've been working for Ms Wilde as long as you say, you must have met other vam . . . others like her." Struggling with what terms not to use in public was beginning to wear on her. Talking with Martin in public was a little like two people trying to ignore an elephant in a small room.

"Yes." Martin said slowly, his eyes suddenly wary.

"Did you ever meet the man who I worked for? Rhinebeck Athill. LaCroix said he was -- "

But Martin was shushing her, eyes narrowed. "Don't say that name aloud. Alright? Even before he left the Sabbat to pursue his own endeavours, he wasn't popular. I've never met him."

"But you've heard of him." she pressed.

Martin didn't respond for a long moment. He fished a bit of cloth out of his hip pocket and polished his glasses meticulously, squinting through them before returning them to his nose. When he looked at her again, his expression was grave. "Look, Emily. I don't know what you expect me to tell you. The Kindred community is a lot like a bad tabloid sometimes. Rumours are always flying around, and nobody really trusts anyone. Neither will you, if you're smart."

She refused to be distracted. "What rumours have you heard then?"

Leaning back in his chair, Martin sighed heavily. He ruffled one hand through his hair, inspiring it into new and interesting configurations. "I'm not trying to keep something from you. I just don't want to be the one responsible for feeding you misinformation. All I know is that the man you worked for was widely regarded as more than a little bit unhinged, even in the Sabbat. He was supposed to be conducting some sort of experiements, on people iand/i Kindred." He paused, and he sounded reluctant when he continued. "He was a very ambitious man. If you can call him a man. And I'd heard he either left the Sabbat or was driven out when they tried to kill him and take his work. Nobody's seen him in a long time, but people are always on the lookout."

He fell silent, and Emily let him, turning the information over in her mind. It wasn't much, but it was strange. As much as she'd disliked Athill, it had been because he was arrogant and condescending, not because she'd thought he was some sort of deviant. He'd always been perfectly polite to her, always flattering. So much so, she'd often thought he should have a career in politics. She brought his face to mind, tried to summon any memories she might have forgotten. Had he ever done anything strange around her? Said anything odd? All she could remember was his smile, sharp as a razor blade, and something about that bothered her. She let the topic drop for now. She didn't think it was a mystery she'd be able to unravel in one night.

"Back in the elevator." Emily began hesitantly. "Ms Wilde got very . . . intense for a moment there. Who's Natasha?"

"My partner." Martin said shortly. And then, before she could respond, he stood up. "I'm going to the bathroom. Don't go anywhere, and don't talk to anybody."

Emily stared after him as he walked away. She felt a brief but intense urge to do something childlike, thumb her nose at his back maybe. "Aren't we bossy." she muttered. She was tired, and she was frustrated. Even under ideal circumstances, she didn't think she and Martin would have got along too well. He was too tightly wound.

"Are you lonely?" a soft, feminine voice whispered suddenly in Emily's ear.

She jumped and twisted around to see a woman perched on the chair beside her. And all she could do was stare.

The woman's hair was dyed. Had to be, because it was a red nature never saw. Long and straight and gleaming, brilliant, deep and dark, scintillating with threads of ruby, auburn, copper. Her face might have been carved by a brilliant sculptor, someone who would have been driven to obsession by the perfection of his creation. Her lips were perfect rosebuds, soft and plump, painted red like her hair, and her face was so flawless, so refined and sensual, with long, blue-grey eyes, that she would draw stares from men and women alike. She was dressed in tight, form-fitting black leather that only served to accentuate her long, lithe form.

"Hi, pet." she breathed.

It was then that Emily saw the fangs. Like a spell had been broken, she jerked back, and would have toppled off her chair if not for the hands that clamped down on her shoulders. She twisted around to see a man towering over her, tall and dignified but achingly handsome. There were the faintest wings of gray at the temples of his blue-black hair, cut short and combed back from his forehead in waves that seemed to invite a caress. His nose was straight and partisan, brow strong and somehow forbidding over green eyes flecked with bright, clear brown. He was wearing a long, dark trench coat, and he gazed down at Emily with faint amusement. "Going somewhere?" He had a deep, pleasant voice, impossibly rich and somehow teasingly insinuating. It was a bedroom voice, she decided, and despite knowing what he was, what he might intend, she still found herself responding to it; a slight flush rising to her cheeks, nipples tightening.

Even as knew as she was to this whole world, she thought she had gleaned enough from Martin's long lecture to make an educated guess as to what was going on. From Martin's description of the Clans, these two were Toreador. Had to be. She thought back frantically, trying to remember more. They shared the same unnatural beauty that Ginerva did, but theirs was undermined by something hard and cold in their eyes. Martin had said the Toreador had the ability to Dominate minds . . . much the same way LaCroix had done to her earlier.

"I was just thinking how I'm really getting tired of vampires fucking with my brain." Emily replied in a glib tone she was proud of. Her hands she kept pressed flat against the table so they wouldn't tremble.

The male chuckled, and she blushed again, cursing herself for it. He kept his grip but rubbed her shoulders, making her skin tingle. "No need to be unfriendly. Giselle and I only wanted to keep you company. Maybe talk a while."

"No, thank you." Emily kept her voice cheerful and polite with an effort. "I'm waiting for someone."

"You'll like talking to us, pet." Giselle said. Her eyes were wide and dark with the threat of lust or violence. Or both. "William and I are very good company. Come for a walk with us."

"I don't think so."

For a moment, Giselle's face darkened with anger. And then she smiled and whispered. "Come with us." and the words blossomed and resonated in Emily's head like bells.

Inside her brain, a part of her was still screaming in defiance, trying to wake herself up. She stood as though she'd been pulled by strings and turned to walk towards the back exit without another word. William had one arm around her waist, and Giselle was at her back, one hand between Emily's shoulders. People glanced up as they passed, but it was only with admiring looks for Emily's unwanted companions. All they saw was some lucky woman leaving with the most beautiful people in the bar. She felt like screaming at them, but couldn't. Her mouth might as well have been glued shut.

The alley was deserted, and there was a chill in the night air. William moved behind her again, using his hands on her hips to turn her to face Giselle, and all she could do was let him, her body as placid and poseable as a doll. Emily felt her skin prickle with unease. She didn't like having her back to him, didn't like this whole situation, but she didn't like looking at Giselle, either. There was something that was too feverishly bright in the vampire's eyes, something decidedly . . . unhinged.

"We know you work for the Prince." William said quietly. "And we know he's been very busy with something lately. Does he tell you all his secrets, little Ghoul? We saw you leave his tower."

Emily swallowed and said nothing. Her only real comfort was that she really had nothing ito/i tell them, even if she'd wanted to. LaCroix hadn't exactly been forthcoming with her. Still, what he had told her – namely about her former employer – she had no intention of revealing. She knew instinctively that it would be a bad idea, especially if what Martin had told her about Rhinebeck was true.

"Aw, don't be like that." Giselle laughed. "What did he tell you about us, pet? That all Sabbat are mindless, stupid, crude animals? Surely you can see for yourself that's not true."

William's hands suddenly slipped up from her hips to cover her breasts, and Emily sucked in a shocked breath at the boldness of the move. She still couldn't pull away. His touch felt incredibly good – better than it should – and he pulled her back against him. He kneaded and squeezed the pliant flesh, wringing an unwilling moan from her, and she felt him bend down and press his lips to her ear. "You're not bad for a worthless Ghoul. Give us what we want, and we could be very good to you before we have to kill you."

The words should have turned her cold all over, made her panic, but she couldn't. Giselle was still staring at her, and her eyes were wide and compelling, even in the gloom. Emily was rooted to the spot, and she could only gasp and rise up on the balls of her feet as William found the hard points of her nipples through the material of her shirt and pulled on them, rolling them between his fingers and laughing softly.

_Bastard. Bastard._ She thought, unable to voice it. She tensed as she felt his tongue, cool and soft and wet, run up the side of her neck to her earlobe. He drew it into his mouth and sucked on it slowly, and the sensation of the hardness of his fangs scraping across that sensitive flesh made her shiver.

"Come on, kitten." Giselle cooed, stepping closer. She smiled triumphantly past Emily at William. "We can make it good for you. That's more than we'd usually offer one of you Camarilla wind-up toys. We're not so bad. You see?"

"Stop." Emily groaned, forcing the word out with difficulty. She still couldn't move, and she could feel sweat beading at her temples. William ignored her, nuzzling the area where her neck met her shoulder. Even as she felt a fresh flush of heat rise to the surface of her skin, Emily wanted to jerk away. _A corpse. A corpse. No matter what it feels like, it's a corpse. _her mind yammered, but her body refused to cooperate.

Giselle laid her hands on Emily's shoulders as she stepped closer still. Their bodies were barely an inch apart, and she slid her hands up Emily's neck to cup the sides of her face. Her hands were cool and soft but there was a terrible strength to her tender grip. "Tell me what Sebastian wants with you. Why you're so special he's kept you all locked up." she murmured, smiling sweetly.

It was the name that did it. Emily wasn't sure why, but it seemed to unlock the paralysis that had dropped over her mind, the chains falling away. _ Sebastian LaCroix. Sebastian LaCroix. _she thought, the name turning over and over. He'd said she belonged to him. Maybe that was true, but that didn't mean she had to roll over for every vampire who crooked a finger at her.

Giselle was still looking at her expectantly, lips slightly parted. She leaned forward, cupping the back of Emily's head to put her lips close to her ear. "You're so easy. All of you stupid little wannabes. Tell me. Tell your mistress. Be a good little kitty and maybe we'll make you purr."

"You stink like an old grave, you bitch." Emily whispered.

Giselle's eyes flew open as she jerked back, her mouth dropping into a perfect O of surprise that might have been funny under other circumstances. Emily could have laughed except for what happened next.

"You _whore_." Giselle spat, face contorting and becoming unlovely and inhuman in her rage.

And she sized Emily by the front of her jacket and threw her easily, effortlessly through the window of the building next door.

Martin had said being a Ghoul came with certain benefits. Not just a longer life, but you were stronger, faster. Emily thought that was the only thing that kept her from being sliced to ribbons by breaking glass as she curled up in a ball in the air an instant before she smashed through, arms raised in front of her face. She hit the floor with a grunt, rolling over and quickly staggering to her feet. She started to dart off into the gloom – all her eyes could pick out were stacked crates and shadows in a vast space – and she stumbled forward with a gasp at a sudden sharp pain in her side. Clutching it at, she ran at an ungraceful lope off to the right.

Behind her, more glass shattered and fell to the ground as the two vampires forced their way through. Emily ran as silent as she could through the warehouse, trying to breathe quietly through her open mouth and not suck in the noisy gasps of air she wanted with that pain gnawing through her.

At the moment, she was more angry than afraid. Now that the mind-fuck Giselle had pulled on her had worn off, the burn of humiliation was keeping the fear at bay. The thought of what they'd done to her, what they'd try to do, brought a surge of heat to her face in the dark. In all her life, she'd never been touched like that, like she was a commodity, like she didn't matter beyond what someone wanted from her.

"You think you're clever?" Giselle's voice had lost much of it's previous sultry gloss. She spat the words out with venom. "Camarilla bitch! Fucking kine whore!"

Emily dropped into a crouch as she ran, moving away from the sound of Giselle's voice. William spoke up from somewhere far too close for comfort. He sounded almost regretful, but there was a dark note of manic glee beneath it. "You've made things very difficult for yourself now. We'll get what we want, but I promise you won't enjoy the process."

Something hard and unyeilding barked into Emily's shin in the dark, and she bit down on her tongue to avoid cursing as she barely avoided a noisy fall. Blinking back tears of pain, she patted her hands over what she'd stumbled into. She felt dry, splintery wood, dusty against her palms. A crate of some sort. She was just feeling her way around it when her hand closed over something smooth and cold.

Her heart leaped into her throat erratically but her mind identified it before she could damn herself by screaming or something equally foolish. A pipe of some sort. Hard, dusty metal, maybe three feet long. _Better than nothing_.

Even as she snatched it up, Emily felt another stab of anger, this time for Martin Chatham. He'd known she was still mostly clueless about this, known how damn dangerous this strange new midnight world was, and he'd still left her alone. Part of her mind was trying to tell her that she was being unfair, that he hadn't exactly abandoned her, and besides, did she really think he could save her single-handedly from those two creatures? Or even make much of a difference? Emily ignored it. She was already learning that her anger was one of the best shields she had, and she nutured it, fanned it, hoping it would be enough to get her out of this alive.

She craned her neck, listening. Her eyes had begun to adjust to the dark now, and she could make out the vastness of the space she was in now. Other stacks of crates, distracting jumbles, though some reached as high as the vaulted ceiling above. She was pondering trying to scale one of those, maybe sneak out across the criss-crossing support beams between walls and ceiling, when she heard the first footstep.

Although it had always struck her as a tired old cliché, Emily felt the hair at the nape of her neck suddenly start trying to stand on end. The footstep had been soft, stealthy, and she thought the only reason she might have heard it was because of the thick layer of grit and dirt covering the floor. Clutching the pipe, she felt her way back around the crates, away from the source of the sound.

Except now it was coming from the opposite direction. Emily cursed soundlessly. Her grip on the pipe was sweaty, and she wiped her hands nervously on her hips. _Get out. Out of earshot. Find someone. Find Martin. Hell, just get inside the damn bar. They won't try anything in front of so many people . . . would they?_

Maybe, maybe not, but it was her only option.

Unfortunately, she didn't get a chance to try as a pair of crushingly strong hands siezed her by the shoulders.

Emily reacted fast, faster than she would have thought possible for her. She spun around and brought the pipe down overhead in a stabbing motion, the arc completed before she even thought about it. She heard concrete crunch as the pipe crashed down on end into the wall, the shock of the blow travelling all the way up her arm and making her grunt.

_Missed. Shit. Shitshitshit._

There was a pause, and then a low, soft, feminine giggle. "Nice try."

Emily had just time enough to think what a pathetic attempt she'd put up before she found herself flying through the air again. Her hands snatched wildly at anything within distance and siezed a handful of some thick heavy type of fabric as she slammed into the wall. It fell with her as she landed, ripping away from it's bindings with a soft purring sound and falling on her with the heavy smell of mildew and dry rot. She gagged and thrashed against it, pushing the weight off her even as she saw Giselle and William moving towards her.

Apparently she'd pulled down a make-shift curtain covering one of the tall windows, and moonlight now streamed in through it, illuminating the area in which she lay. It seemed wrong somehow that the light should be so kind to Giselle when she was so monstrous, make her skin sparkle and shine like alabaster. "That was almost fun, even if it was over too quickly. It's fun to hunt things that try to fight back."

"Try being the word." William said. His voice was still deep and smooth, but it had lost all of it's earlier hypnotic appeal.

"You guys," Emily managed with a bravado she didn't feel, "have the shittiest recruitment tactics I've ever seen."

If she was still angry over what Emily had said earlier – and she more than likely was – Giselle gave no sign. There was a sparkle of excitement in her eyes that Emily didn't like. "I'll let you try and tell me one more time. It's still going to hurt, but if you tell me I'll wait until you're dead before I start with some of the really interesting things."

"Go fuck yourself." Emily spat. She was trying to get her feet under her, mount some kind of defense, but her body was too sore and slow.

"Don't be difficult." William said now. He inclined his head towards her and smiled in a way she would have found charming if he hadn't done to her what he had. As it was, she stared at him with revulsion. "Really. Do you owe the Camarilla that much loyalty?"

"I owe you _pain_."

He raised an eyebrow and smirked a little. "Well, they certainly train them to be scrappy these days, don't they?" he murmured.

Ignoring him, Giselle stepped around him, standing with her hands on her hips. She looked dazzling, triumphant. A statue of Artemis standing over a fresh kill, beautiful and savage. "One more time, pet. We know something's going on with LaCroix. He's being far too sneaky these days. And then you get dragged into his place in the middle of the night half-dead, and the next time we see you, you're running high on Kindred blood as his newest little lapdog." She narrowed her eyes to glittering slits. "Tell me. Tell me how you're important to him before I go into your brain and take it."

_I'm going to die._ Emily thought dryly, even as she opened her mouth. "Go to hell, you worthless piece of Sabbat dogshit." It was the best she could come up with under the circumstances, but it gave her a grim sense of satisfaction nonetheless.

She never got to see Giselle's reaction, however, because at that instant a dark sharp came barrelling out from behind a stack of crates and crashed into her. She was lifted up off her feet and barely had time to shriek before she was carried out of sight.

"GISELLE!" There was genuine shock and worry in William's voice. He spun around and started to lunge after her, when a second shape dropped down from nowhere – it actually seemed to be disgorged from the shadows overhead – and landed on his back. Howling with anger, he snatched at it, and Emily could hear something hissing and spitting like a cornered cat.

Without pausing to second-guess herself, Emily flung herself at William, still struggling with his attacker. His head snapped around as she crashed into him and he snarled down at her, all semblance of courtliness gone. He was holding a snarling, snapping, thrashing figure at bay with both hands, and he didn't have an arm to spare to raise in defense. Emily attacked him with a gusto that might have shamed her before tonight; her fingers hooked into claws and she went for his eyes, lips skinned back from her teeth in unconscious feral mimicry.

The vampire howled in pain and rage, lashing out awkwardly with a kick that glanced off her hip. She grunted with the impact, but refused to let go, smashing one elbow into his face now as she seized his throat with her free hand. She could hear herself panting with fear, anger, and exertion, the sort of short raspy sounds a dog might make in the heat of summer. She half-expected the blow aimed at his face to glance off him, he seemed so superhumanly solid, but she was instead rewarded with the crunch of bone beneath her descending elbow, and she felt a savage satisfaction.

William shrieked, letting go with the figure he'd been grappling with to shove her away and clutch at his face. In an instant, the figure was on him again, driving him back into the shadows, and Emily heard a pile of wood splinter and give way as they crashed into a pile of crates. She turned, looking frantically for something to arm herself with, and that's when she saw it.

The pipe was embedded more than halfway through the solid concrete wall. For some reason, Emily was almost afraid to touch it. Martin had said being a Ghoul had certain advantages, but she'd never imagined herself capable of such a feat. She thought of what such a strike would have done to Giselle's perfect face if it hadn't missed, and wasn't sure wether to feel pleased or frightened.

"Who are you?" a sharp female voice from behind demanded, and Emily spun around to see another vampire moving towards her out of the shadows. It was hard to tell, but she thought this might have been who had driven William off.

She was short, short and almost painfully thin. Her short, black hair had been styled with gel that set it standing up in erratic spikes, and her pale, thin face was devoid of makeup, although it was smudged here and there with what looked like soot. She would have been pretty if not for the wild look in her electric blue eyes. She was wearing a pair of black-and-red striped leggings underneath a short black skirt, a plain black t-shirt that looked at least two sizes too big tucked into the waist. "Who are you?" she demanded in a high, shrill voice. "You were following me! Don't deny it! I smelled your shadow, you were there, you were watching me, and I see you!"

Eyes wide, Emily threw up her hands in self-defense. "Hey. Hey, no, really. I don't know what you're talking about, okay?" _God, please, what next?_ she thought dismally. "I was just . . . look, you're the one who saved _me_."

As if she hadn't heard, the female vampire advanced a step. "You're a liar." she hissed in a low furious voice. Even after tonight, it was still one of the most terrifying things Emily had ever heard. "They're always watching me, because they think I won't know, won't catch them, but I will. I do. You . . . you're . . . " She trailed off, frowning suddenly. As suddenly as it had come, the malice was gone, and in it's place was only a desperate sort of confusion. " . . . I don't understand."

Emily resisted the urge to groan. "Well, neither do I."

"Whatcha got there, Annie?"

The voice was deep and raspy, the voice of someone who was a longtime smoker. The man that emerged into the light shed through the window was tall and rangy, dressed in a battered leather jacket that gaped open to his lean, bare torso. His face was all hard angles and shadows, partially covered by a rather spectacularily long, dirty beard that fell partway down his chest. His long black hair was wild and snarled, and his eyes were perhaps the palest shade of blue she'd ever seen. She thought he was the dark shape she'd seen hurtling after Giselle. If so, he was remarkably nonchalant.

He draped an arm casually over the woman's shoulder, ignoring her when she hissed at him. It looked to be more of a reflexive action than anything else; Annie's anger quickly evaporated and her expression turned frustrated and confused, gaze wandering around the area. "Poor kid. Better off'n most of her kind, but, then, that's relative, ain't it?"

"I don't -- "

"Don't talk about me like that!" Annie cried suddenly, jerking away from him. She folded her arms protectively across her breasts and hugged herself, rocking on her heels slightly. "Everyone . . . everyone is always talking about me, and it's hard to sleep, and you said you wouldn't so don't say things about me just because I . . . I . . . " Her voice trailed off and she frowned slightly at her feet, face twisting in frustration. " . . . I don't know."

" 'Course," he went on, dropping into a crouch before Emily, forearms resting on his knees so his hands dangled between his legs, "you'd make a good message, sweetheart. Nothin' says 'get out of town' like a bag of Ghoul. Don't you think?"

Emily went cold all over. She was pressed flat against the alley wall as though she could force her way through it and out the other side. She raised one hand slowly, forcing it not to tremble. "Stay back. I don't want any trouble. I'm warning you -- " She cut off, gasping when he seized her hand. He'd done it so quickly she hadn't even seen the movement. His grip was cold and hard; it was like her wrist had been encased in old stone.

"You're warning me what?" That smile was still in place, but his eyes were hard. His grip tightened slightly and she bit back a hiss of pain. "That's the trouble with you. Get your first sip of the red stuff and start thinking you're bigger, badder than anything out there. Well, let me be the first to tell you, honey. You're not."

"Jack, no. Stop. You – stop. Stoppit." Surprising them both, Annie snatched handfuls of the back of Jack's vest and pulled him bodily backwards. He didn't release Emily, and she came lurching to her feet with the motion. "You . . . you stop. You let her go. I said no. Okay? Just . . . no."

"Easy there, kiddo. I was just rattling her chain a little." Despite his words, the sudden rangy grin, that coldness hadn't gone out of Jack's eyes. His hand opened and Emily wasted no time in backing away. She refused to allow him the satisfaction of rubbing at the pain in her wrist in front of him despite the throbbing. "What? No thank you? We just saved your ass from fertilizing the trash heap out back, you know."

"Th . . . thank you." Despite directing her words more at Annie, and what Jack had tried to do – what he might have done if the other vampire hadn't been present – Emily still meant the sentiment. She knew she'd been in over her head.

"Thank Annie. I was gonna go on by, but she just hard to come charging in. Good kid. Head ain't screwed on just right." Jack grunted, his head cocking slightly. "Someone's coming."

Annie's eyes widened even further, and she seized him by the wrist, shaking his arm in agitation the way a child might to get the attention of a distracted parent. "We have to go. We have to . . . go, Jack, go!"

"Yeah, allright, I hear ya. Take it easy." Jack looked back at Emily. That smile was still in place, though she wished it wasn't. It showed far too much tooth for it to be really friendly, even without the look in his eyes. "You got off easy, kid. You and your boss. Those two won't be back tonight, but they're gonna be gunning for you now. You go on back and tell him what happened. Everything. Including who saved your skin." He was letting Annie tug him off in the direction of the far door, deeper into the dark shrouding the rest of the warehouse. "You tell him what I think of the Camarilla if they can't keep their own goddamned brats outta the woodchipper. That was your only one, kid. Watch it."

She tried to think of something to respond with. Heroines in movies or books always seemed to have an endless string of witty retorts. But with her heart pounding in her breast and the pain in her ribs and wrist as a cautionary tale, her mouth was stupid and silent.

As soon as they were out of sight, Martin burst in through the warehouse door. He looked pale and worried, and the tense expression didn't relax even when he saw Emily. He snatched her by her arm and pulled her out the door, trying to look everywhere at once as he lead her at a brisk trot towards the parking lot. "That was my fault." he said in clipped tones. "I admit it. I came back and you were gone." They had reached his car, a nondescript maroon fourdoor. He ushered her around to the passenger's side and began to bundle her in, still talking. "I shouldn't have left you. I asked someone sitting next to us and they said you'd left with two friends, these two -- "

"Sabbat." Emily said, letting Martin usher her into the car. He stopped when he heard her and fixed her with an unreadable look. She could see the pulse beating suddenly faster in his temple.

"We need to go." he repeated after a moment, and then he shut her door and hurried around to the driver's side. The engine caught with a surprising roar as he turned the key, and he took off out of the parking lot fast enough to make the tires squeal in protest. He waited until they were on the highway, pointed back in what she thought was the direction of LaCroix's tower, before looking at her. "Tell me everything."

Martin listened in silence as she spoke, and Emily was thankful for it. She needed to hear the steadiness in her own voice, needed to let it all out before she felt like panicking again. Somehow, speaking it all aloud made the whole thing seem smaller, less important, as though it had happened to someone else. The throbbing in her right side reminded her otherwise.

"I know the man you're talking about." Martin said when she'd finished. "Not . . . personally. But I do know of him. He's got something of a reputation in the community, a sort of . . . I don't know . . . folk hero to the Anarchs. I don't think your Master is pleased to have him in the area. I'm honestly a little surprised; I'd always heard he was fairly decent, for an Anarch. You must have caught him at a bad time."

"Silly me." Emily resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Getting thrown through a window like that without regard to the night he was having. What was I thinking? Damned inconsiderate."

Either oblivious to or ignoring her sarcasm, Martin continued. "I don't know who the female was. You'll have to inform Prince LaCroix, of course. About everything, I mean, but this newcomer too. From your description, I don't think I'd be overreaching my estimate in saying she's of the Clan Malkavian, however."

They drove in silence for a while. Emily had never been to Los Angeles before, and the fact that there were traffic snarls even so late at night seemed ridiculous to her.

"Did they hurt you?" Martin asked finally.

Emily didn't have to ask who he meant. "No." She had no intention of telling him the things William had done. Her skin crawled with the memory, and she wanted to climb under the near-scalding spray of a shower as soon as possible.

"You . . . " Emily began, then hesitated.

"Go on."

" . . . what's it like? Your life now, I mean."

Martin was silent, but in the short time she'd known him, Emily thought she knew when he was refusing to acknowledge something and when he was mulling something over. "I'm not sure what to tell you, Emily." he said finally. There was a sort of weariness in his voice she hadn't heard before. "Ms Wilde has been easier to work for than some masters, judging from what I've heard. She is a good woman, and I believe you could trust her, if you needed to. She asks a lot of me, but at the same time she respects a measure of my time and privacy." He paused. "I can't say what your Master will be like."

"He's not my Master." Emily said automatically, but the words had a hollow sound, even to her.

Martin glanced at her. "You feel drawn to him, right? When he's paying attention to you, good or bad, it's satisfying and you don't know why. You just met him, and even under the circumstances you feel like he's important to you. Like you want to be around him, even knowing what he is. Am I right?"

Emily stared at him. "How do you -- "

"It's the same, Emily, for all of us who end up in your position." Martin let out a slow breath and shook his head. "It's the blood."

"I don't understand."

"No. But you will."

It was late by the time she got back to the Venture tower. The security guard at the front desk seemed to know who she was, and steered her into an elevator headed for LaCroix's office, hovering over her all the while in case she decided to bolt. The man was human, but she was glad when the elevator doors slid shut, closing off the greed and coldness she saw lighting his eyes. She wondered how much he knew, and what sort of man would willingly enter the service of a monster. Judging by how big the tower was, how many people Martin had said worked here . . . a lot. It didn't sit well with her.

The top floor seemed to be deserted, but the elevator opened directly in front of LaCroix's office, so there was no way she could get lost. Emily started to knock, then

LaCroix was sitting at his desk, head bent over a heavy, worn looking book, one hand restlessly buried in his hair. His jacket was off and draped over the back of his chair, along with his tie. He looked up as she entered, a flicker of annoyance crossing his face. "Where were you?" he demanded before she could say anything. "I told you to be back before dawn."

"It is before dawn." Emily said, trying not to sound combative. After the night she'd had, she didn't think she could handle any more conflict.

He made an irritated sound. "Not very." He returned his attention to the book, flipping through the pages quicker than she could follow. The old paper made a sound like dead leaves as he turned it. She shifted uncertainly from foot to foot, not sure if that had been a dismissal, or if he was expecting something more. At length, he glanced up at her, frowning. "Your manner tonight has been lacking. I sincerely hope Martin taught you the proper way to conduct yourself around your betters."

He certainly had, though probably not in the way LaCroix was thinking.

_Have you ever seen nature programs talk about wolf packs? It's the same thing. Don't make eye contact with the pack leaders, don't upset the heirarchy. Let them bare their teeth and snarl if they have to. Just take it. Show them your belly when you have to. It'll keep you alive._

"I'm . . . sorry." Emily said.

LaCroix snorted – or at least something like it. His eyes dropped to the book again, and Emily had to remind herself where she stood as she fought off a wave of irritation. She had never been treated this way before, never as though she were something less, something below notice, an inconvenience, and she hated him for it. She continued to stand where she was as he flipped through the book with increasing agitation until he snapped it shut in disgust.

"This is . . . this is all preposterous." he muttered, standing up and striding past her to sling the book into a pile of others sitting haphazardly on one of the low, stylised couches in the center of the room. He stood with his back to her for a moment, muttering to himself, before spinning around to narrow his eyes at her. "What do you think of Molly O'Malley?"

Emily hesitated. That had been another one of Martins 'lessons'. _Keep your opinions to yourself. _ Besides, this sounded like one of those trap questions with no right answer. "I don't know." she said finally. "I just met her."

"Well of _course_. Don't be deliberately obtuse." LaCroix snapped. "But surely you have an opinion. What kind of woman does she impress you as?" He paused, and when he spoke again his tone was quieter, more modulated. "Go ahead. Tell me what you really think. I want another opinion."

The fact was, Emily had already decided she didn't like the vampire. Never would. There was something in the depths of those clear hazel eyes that put Emily powerfully in mind of the Toreador woman who'd accosted her tonight. The same sort of breezy arrogance and self confidence that comes with the belief that everything and everybody is just there to get you along.

Emily glanced at him mistrustfully. " . . . she seems like she's a very careful woman. The type who considers everything she says and does hours in advance. She . . . she's very sure of herself."

It was such a nebulous, bullshit political answer Emily expected him to snap at her again, but LaCroix only shook his head grimly. "Yes, and that's the problem, isn't it? She thinks I don't . . . " He cocked his head, eyes suddenly focusing on her. "What happened tonight?"

Emily couldn't conceal her surprise. "I -- "

"Don't try and lie to me. I can smell it on you. Fear and anger."

Swallowing, Emily looked away from the white-hot intensity in his gaze. She recounted what had happened in as few words as possible, again leaving out Williams . . . attentions as she had with Martin. She looked at him as she finished, and was alarmed to see thunderheads growing in his expression.

"The _Sabbat_ know you're here." he hissed. He raised his hands, looking murderous, before clenching them into fists and lowering them slowly down to his sides. "Wonderful. Wonderful. Yes, things weren't nearly complicated enough, now it's perfect." he spat the last word out.

"I didn't tell them anything." Emily said defensively. Without even realising it, she was tensed to run, although if LaCroix was half as fast as the other vampires she'd seen tonight she didn't think she'd get far.

"And better for you that you didn't." LaCroix muttered. He was pacing back in front of her. Even with everything that had happened, everything that she knew, Emily still felt a sudden, strange compulsion to go to him. Try to soothe him somehow. She watched him prowl across the floor and her pulse was suddenly fluttering in her neck. Was this what Martin had meant? Her eyes followed the line of his back beneath his shirt appreciatively, the way the muscles in his throat worked as he clenched his jaw.

She stamped down on the feelings – hard – but she was left feeling flustered and angry with herself. "What do you want me to do now?" she asked finally, as much to get an idea of where she stood as to distract herself. She was tired in a way she'd never been before, soul-weary to go with the myriad of aches in her body. Even if this bizarre, awful world would still be here when next she opened her eyes, all she wanted was to bury her head under a pillow and fall asleep for as long as possible.

"Do?" LaCroix stopped his obsessive pacing and frowned at her. He glanced past her at the night sky beyond the windows and sighed suddenly, some of the ire leaving his expression. "You're staying here, obviously. In the room I provided you. You'll stay there until nightfall. I can't have you wandering around on your own."

"Of course not." Although she'd expected as much, Emily still felt defeated. True, she was exhausted, but what she really wanted was to be able to go home. _Not bloody likely. Get used to it._

"We'll figure out a more permanent solution tomorrow night." LaCroix went on as though she hadn't spoken. He paused and shot her a brief glance. " . . . perhaps I shouldn't have sent you out so soon. Martin is hardly appropriate security."

Taken aback by what was probably as close to an apology as he ever gave, Emily shrugged. "We . . . we did allright."

Emily didn't understand him, and his sudden changes in mood made her nervous. Alternately so dismissive and then focused on her. In the very short time she'd known him, all she could make of him was that he was perhaps the most demanding man she'd ever met. And maybe the most harried, too. The calm, imperious demeanor he'd worn earlier that night was a good one, but she could sense the tension, the stress in him.

There was something strange about the way he was looking at her, something speculative and focused she didn't like. He let his jacket drop back over his chair and stepped around the side of his desk, extending one hand towards her. "Come here." When she didn't move, he raised an eyebrow and frowned slightly. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm not going to hurt you . . . don't have me _make_ you do it." he added, and the thought of that mental hold over her spurred her into action. She'd had more than enough of that, thank you very much.

LaCroix's hand clamped shut over her arm as she drew near and he pulled her forward until she was standing less than a foot away from him. His eyes roamed over her face, something appraising and thoughtful there. Emily stood rigidly, fighting the urge to pull away.

Except . . . she didn't want to, really. It was hard to close out the . . . feelings he seemed to inspire in her when he was so close. She stared back at him, her eyes wide, and her breath caught when he suddenly pulled her even closer, closing the distance between them. One of his arms slipped around her back to hold her in place, and his other hand slid up into her hair, tilting her head back to accommodate for the difference in height so she could look him in the eye.

For a moment, Emily had the idea that he meant to kiss her. The idea was ridiculous, of course. Whatever that strange look in his eyes was, romance wasn't it. She knew that much, but it was hard to think. Her hands had come up reflexively and were pressed flat against his chest. She could feel hard muscle beneath the crisp material of his shirt and she swallowed nervously.

"What . . . what are you doing?"

His grip shifted, cupping the back of her head with with deceptive gentleness, but when she tried to pull away he held her as easily as she might have held a struggling kitten. "It's easier if you relax." he murmured, eyes luminous in the gloom of his office. Almost . . . hypnotic.

Instantly recalling every vampire myth she'd ever heard, Emily dragged her gaze away with an effort, breath hitching with sudden fright in her chest. It didn't help. If anything, his grip only tightened as he pulled her head to one side. He did it slowly and almost gently, but there was no refusing the power in the movement no matter how much she strained. At the same time, his free arm snaked around her back, pulling her closer.

The embrace was intimate, but there was something missing. She realised it a moment later when she felt his lips brush across the big pulse in her neck. He wasn't breathing. She should have known, but it still startled and unnerved her further. That warm wash of breath she would have felt from a lover in a similar situation wasn't there, and neither was the familiar rise and fall of the chest. Somehow it was that, more than anything else she'd seen or done that evening, that brought the full alienness of the situation crashing down on her.

"Please don't do this." Emily whispered again, shocked to find herself begging. There were tears standing in her eyes, and she couldn't blink them away. Her vision trembled, doubling and shimmering. "Please, please don't. It's too much, too much, I can't --"

"Sshh." He kissed her throat lightly, the merest pressure of his lips, and she felt him sigh. "It's my right, and I need it. It's been a long night."

And then she felt the burn of the bite.

For a moment the pain was so intense, so sharp, that Emily felt as though he'd pressed a branding iron against her skin rather than biting her. As suddenly as it came, however, it was gone. Replaced by an incredible sensation that seemed to be boiling up from somewhere deep inside her, spreading warmth across every inch of her skin. She gasped, her eyes widening. She could feel his mouth sealed to her throat, drawing something vital from her, but each pull only sent a throb of sensation through her. It was . . . it was like . . .

Her limbs didn't seem to want to respond, and if not for the now fiercely tight hold he had on her she might have collapsed. There was no strength in her legs anymore. Her body was tingling, skin tightening. She heard herself sucking in gasps of air, but he was silent. It was like being held by a marble statue, but the way she was feeling . . . the sensation that something bright and great was building inside her, turning her to molten liquid beneath his lips . . . all she wanted was . . .

The fog was descending now. Two tears had slipped from the corners of her eyes, but they were half-lidded now with a heady languor, her lips slightly parted. Her right hand came up and brushed weakly against his back. "Please . . . please don't . . . " she said, her voice barely more than a sigh as the room grew farther and farther away.

"Please don't stop . . . "


	4. Chapter 3

THREE

Author's Note: I'm sorry for the delay in posting this, but we had several family crises one after the other that put me out of the writing mood for a while. I suck, I know. Now that everything is back to normal and everyone is okay, I finally feel like getting back to this. Updates should be at least once a week from now on. Also, I decided this chapter wasn't naughty enough to warrant the edit, but it is a little risque in the first bit. You've been warned.

_She knows she's dreaming._

_That knowledge should give her some sort of power over the situation. Enable her to banish it, shape it. But her mind refuses to comply._

_She blinks, and she's still there. Standing in front of an enormous plate glass window that overlooks the city at night. A million tiny points of glimmering light in the darkness, streetlights or stars she doesn't know. If not for the ground beneath her feet, she would have felt as though she were floating in the air above it. She can see her reflection, too, a transparent glimmer of it like that night in the hospital. But she's not wearing what she was then; now she's clad in her work clothes, the blouse, skirt and heels Athill demanded she wear. Except . . . _

_When has she ever really looked like this? Her reflection gazes back at her with half closed eyes, heady with the promise of satisfaction to come. Her lips look puffed and slightly swollen, as though she's been sucking on something, and as she watches, she sees the pink tip of her tongue emerge and dot at her upper lip. _

_And behind her . . . _

_She can't see his face. She should be able to; he's taller than her, certainly, and he's pressed against her back, but the shadows keep her from seeing him. She knows him, though. Knows him even without the sensation of his fingers on her skin, slipping just below the hem of her skirt, even without the dark blue suit he's wearing._

_Her body remembers._

_Is this what she really wants, then? This strange tableau her psyche has conjured up? _

_She can feel his lips on the back of her neck – the merest whisper of something – and they move soundlessly as though he's speaking, whether endearment or something else she doesn't know. The sensation makes her shiver. She wants to turn around, to face him and . . . well, at least to face him. But the grip he has on her hips won't permit it, and her legs make a restless, silky sound as they shift together. _

"_Who do you belong to?" he murmurs into her ear, lips tickling the sensitive flesh. She groans and turns her head aside, shifting her hips to try to force the contact, but he avoids it easily, continuing his maddening, teasing stroking. His fingertips press into the sleek muscle of her thighs, tracing trails of ice that make her gasp. She can feel a hardness pressed into the small of her back, and she moves instinctively back against it. "Tell me. And maybe I'll give you what you need."_

"_I don't . . . belong to anyone." she moans, a weak protest._

_He chuckles into her ear. The sound is low and dark and promising. He's stroking her thighs now, caressing her flanks and kneading the soft flesh hard enough to leave bruises. "I put my mark on you." he whispers. "Sealed it with a kiss. What more could you ask for?"_

_She wants to be angry with him, wants to push him away and run . . . somewhere. But she can't. Not with his hands on her like that. Not with his fingers seeking the inside of her thighs, coaxing them apart with feather-light touches that promise so much more. His skin is so cool, and hers is so flushed with heat. She can feel wetness building up between her closed thighs, droplets of moisture that tickle her, and suddenly, all she wants is to open herself to him, completely. The thought should shock her, but it doesn't._

"_Emily . . . where would you go?" he whispers. "Where would you go that I couldn't find you? And why would you want to, when all you want, all you need, is right here? And all you have to do . . . is tell me . . . "_

_Who you belong to._

_He doesn't finish the thought, but she knows that's what he means. And as much as she rebells against it, she can feel her lips trying to part, trying to tell him what her body knows even if her heart fights it. And when he finally slips his fingertips over her most intimate flesh, it's all she can do not to cry it out. _

_The contact is electric, but she only sucks in her breath. She wonders what he thinks of finding her smooth shaven, and his fingertips wander over that flesh with something like approval or curiosity. They tease the line where her thighs meet her pelvis, stroking back and forth over the sensitive flesh until she wants to beg him for it. For whatever he intends._

"_Yours!" she gasps finally with a sound like a broken sob. "Yours, yours, I'm yours. I belong to you."  
_

"_Well, then." he murmurs, and when he turns his head she sees the gleam of his teeth in the darkness. A grin? Or a snarl? "That's all I needed to hear."_

_And as his head darts forward to his neck, she sees the sleek, dark cap of his hair that she knows so well. _

_Her master._

_Rhinebeck Athill._

The morning after was . . . bad. Would have been even without the dream she'd had. Emily couldn't remember all the specifics, only that it had apparently featured her new employer rather prominently. Which was more than enough for her to want to recall at the moment.

After she woke up from LaCroix's . . . well, what would you call it? It definitely hadn't been a love bite. She'd been too weak and pained to really steam up a good panic attack over what had happened, and she thought that probably saved her from descending into blithering idiocy. Never mind how good it had felt – Martin had told her about the physical effects – someone had been _feeding_ off her, damn it, as though she were a juice bag. Someone – likely a flunky of LaCroix's rather than LaCroix himself -- had apparently carried her back here last night and tucked her into bed after first removing her shoes. Somehow, that little courtesy made it all the more worse.

Since she'd been gone with Martin during the night, there had been several items added to her little chambers. A television, looking out of place propped atop an antique sideboard across from the bed that had probably cost more than Emily made in a year. A stack of books and magazines on various subjects neatly arranged on the bedside table. A small fridge that reminded her of something from her college days tucked discreetly in the corner behind an old armoire. LaCroix might have been a monster, but he was certainly a conscientious host.

Well, to a point anyway.

There was still no phone. And when Emily had felt well enough to make a small trip out into the hallway in the early afternoon, all other doors had been securely locked, and the elevator hadn't responded to her repeated attempts to summon it.

Now she sat in a small, snug armchair next to the windows, staring moodily out over the cityscape and rubbing absently, compulsively, at her neck. It was maybe a few hours before sundown, and she knew she should get some more sleep, but sleep wouldn't come. She was a prisoner. A well-kept prisoner, to be sure, in a place that might have put a lot of four-star hotels to shame, but a prisoner nonetheless.

The television was no help. The news in Santa Monica was apparently only important enough to warrant the briefest mention about "continuing investigations into the apparent murders and disappearances of two local women from the hospital two nights before". Emily didn't like that. It almost sounded as though she was being given up for dead. But really, even if she could have gotten to the police, what could she have told them? About the monster in the hospital, or about the man in the ivory tower who'd held her hostage in luxury and bit her neck? Neither was likely to be received well.

What she mainly was interested in was finding out what Martin had meant about the blood. She knew the basics of creating a Ghoul enough to know that at some point, probably when she'd first been brought in, LaCroix had given her his blood. The thought made her feel uneasy, and was frankly a little . . . well . . . ghoulish. But there had to be more behind it, behind the way she found herself reacting to him when she should have been terrified, furious, repulsed. It was more than just the simple fact of his being easy on the eyes and the command he exuded, had to be. Martin had understood too much about the way Emily felt for that to be all.

_I don't know enough._ Emily thought wearily as she dressed, the last of the sun sinking below the horizon. _I don't think I ever could._

About an hour after full darkness had finally descended, there was a knock at the door. Emily had been expecting it for a while. She didn't know what was typically demanded of a Ghoul – Martin had said it varied from vampire to vampire – but she didn't think LaCroix would be content to leave her idle, a suspicion that was confirmed when she opened the door to find a bland-faced security guard who lead her back to LaCroix's office.

The man himself wasn't there. Not yet, anyway. The doors were shut behind her, and Emily wandered resignedly around the room. Even without her situation, she would have felt out of place amidst the lavish, early French décor. LaCroix's desk was completely cleared of anything and everything, not so much as a pen remaining on the surface. She wondered if he was that obsessively tidy, or if he had people who did it for him. Probably both.

Barely five minutes later, the doors swung open and LaCroix walked in. He paused, fixing her with a level look. "Good evening, Ms Roivas."

"Good evening." Emily replied. She was surprised at how normal she sounded.

She'd already decided it wasn't worth making an issue over. Well, of course it was, but he would do what he wanted. She'd learned that the hard way. Easiest just to do what he wanted and keep her head down, hope she didn't make it onto his radar more than was strictly necessary. Besides, what was the alternative? Out there, with the crazy Sabbat vampires who couldn't seem to decide whether they wanted to fuck her or kill her, with the crazy Anarchs who spent their time rescuing people and then threatening them with bodily harm? At least, in this case, Sebastian LaCroix was the monster she knew.

As he walked into the office, her gaze dropped to something swinging at his side. It was so out of place on him, one of the last things she would have expected to see, that at first she couldn't place it. It was a laptop, a silver, flat one that was probably more than a little expensive, slung low on his hip by a strap across his chest. He looked, for all the world, like any of the other young businessmen she'd seen; all he needed was a latte and a stack of lawbooks to complete the image.

"You're . . . handy with a computer?" Emily asked, feeling a smile tug at her lips.

LaCroix gave her an odd look. "If that is the term you wish to use, yes. I know my way with them. Why should that surprise you?" he added, a suspicious look crossing his face.

"I can't even teach my father how to run a word processor, and he's only fifty-five. You're – um." Emily paused. LaCroix was simply staring at her, one eyebrow raised, so stiff and straight and proud she felt awkward all over again. She held up her hands and shook her head a little, biting the inside of her lip to keep from smiling. "Nevermind."

He stared at her a moment longer; she wished not for the first time that she could read his expression better . . . or at all. When he moved towards her suddenly it was all she could do not to leap backwards.

Emily stood perfectly still, resigned to the flutter in her belly caused by his closeness. He made a soft, impatient sound as he eyed her, before reaching out and plucking the clip from her hair that had held it up. He seemed oblivious to her startled look. He ran a hand back through her hair, combing it back from her forehead into place, and looked slightly exasperated when several pieces swung foreward immediately after he took his hand away. The contact sent an electric chill down her spine. "You need to maintain a certain imagine as long as you work for me. Not nearly so . . . casual. Where we're going tonight, you'll be as much of a representitive of the Camarilla as I. So be on your best behavior."

"We're . . . we're going out?" Emily asked, too startled for once to object to being spoken to in that way.

"That's what I said, yes?" He strode past her to his desk and unslung the laptop, sliding it into a drawer and locking it shut. "Is there a problem?"

"It's just that . . . after what happened last night, and how you were saying you needed to keep me away from the Sabbat -- "

"The encounter you had last night has made it abundantly clear that to act as though you are anything other than an ordinary servant is to invite further suspicion and likely more greater interest by the Sabbat." LaCroix said. "Therefore, I have decided to take you with me tonight and whenever I have any other innocuous meeting. It will still the rumours and anticipation surrounding your . . . mystique."

"Just how long do you expect to keep me around?" Emily asked before she could help herself.

He frowned at her. _Why are you being so difficult?_ the look said. "As long as is necessary. Until we discover what Athill was doing, and what role you played in it."

"I suppose it's useless for me to point out that I have no idea what he was doing, and I barely knew him."

"Quite." LaCroix inclined his head. "As you have seen by now, there are certain ways of clouding the mortal mind. Until we ascertain what may or may not have been done, you are to remain with me."

"And how long will _that_ take?" Emily demanded, threads of impatience creeping into her voice.

He gave her an annoyed look, and his tone was sharper when he spoke. "Perhaps you don't understand the seriousness of the situation. I suppose that's to be expected. You do, after all, know painfully little about this world. Rhinebeck Athill and all others like him are a very big danger to Kindred society. A security risk, if you like. The Lasombra are, by nature, a secretive and insidious lot, and whenever one has gone to such lengths as Athill has in covering his steps and put such an effort into his endeavours, it is obviously call for alarm.

"With Angela Drake dead, you are the only real link we have to him. What he may be doing. And I will do everything in my power to find out what that was." he added, with a certain savage satisfaction. "As to how long that will take, I cannot say. There are ways to discover things that have been hidden from someone, but they take time. It isn't like filing a requisitions form, or going through your government's channels of law."

"Well thank God for that." Emily muttered.

He blinked at her for a moment before smiling slightly. "Indeed. In any case, suffice to say I have already placed a call to someone who I believe to be an expert in these matters. They will arrive in a few days. Until then, you are to stay with me, not attract attention to yourself, and function as any other Ghoul would in a typical situation."

"And what does that entail?"

"Whatever I say it does."

_Well, obviously_. Emily thought, but didn't say. She resisted the urge to rub at her neck again. She followed LaCroix from his office and past a pair of stony-faced guards into the elevator. "Where are we going?" she asked as they descended.

"I have a meeting to attend to with several of the more influential members of the Kindred community. We have a number of issues to discuss. Most of them are disappointingly banal, political. But I believe Dominic DuPre has something he wishes to address. I'd imagine it's about the werewolves in Griffith Park. He's gotten paranoid in his old age, it's all he ever worries about . . . "

He said this last so casually, so off-handedly, as though he were informing her that there would be petit fours served, that it took her brain a moment to process it. "Wait. Werewolves?"

LaCroix glanced at her as the elevator opened and she hurried after him into the cavernous lobby. "Yes. Werewolves." She thought he looked amused. "Did Martin not mention that to you?"

"_No_."

"It isn't something you should be concerned about. They have an intense hatred for all Kindred, but they rarely venture into the city proper. They're little more than mindless, destructive beasts."

_Comforting._

They stepped out into the night, and Emily sighed a little at the soft breeze that lifted the hair away from the back of her neck. There was a sleek, long, low black car idling at the curb, another solemn man in uniform standing expectantly by one of the open doors. LaCroix didn't acknowledge him as he gestured past him to the car's interior. "After you."

The car was a smaller one than others he had, only a single seat in the back and designed more for personal travel than making a statement. Emily's thigh was pressed against his, and the warmth was a mild distraction. He spent such little time around the kine that he often forgot about that little difference. It was fascinating, really, how after two hundred years as a vampire one forgot those details, like the soft sound of her breathing. He wondered how she could stand it, the constant needs and desires of her mortal frame. Looking back, he was surprised the constant demands for sleep, food, breath of his own body hadn't driven him mad with frustration long before his own Embrace.

She was looking out the window when he glanced at her. It could have been worse, he supposed. Although the Lasombra's vanity made it unlikely, Athill could still have hired some short, dumpy, unpleasant toad of a kine. This one was so young, with the flush of health in her skin. Most Ghouls, after serving their immortal masters for a stretch of time, tended to develop a faintly unhealthy, graveyard pallor from spending so little time in the day. That, of course, hadn't yet had time to happen to her. She was naturally fair-skinned, but there was still a pleasant, faint bronze cast to her skin, the warm blush of vitality.

His gaze wandered down Emily's profile, the curve of her jaw, to her neck. He wasn't hungry; not yet, anyway. He had actually drunk deeper of her last night than he'd intended, and if she hadn't been a Ghoul she probably would have been bedridden. The memory of that taste was still in his mouth, a faint, not unpleasant burn at the back of his throat.

Sebastian noticed suddenly that he could see the pulse in her neck beating hard and fast. When he looked back up at her face, she was still looking out the window, but her expression was tense and nervous. Colour stood in her cheeks and she swallowed once, convulsively. He felt a little like laughing. Had he really expected her to be oblivious to his scrutiny? She was feigning nonchalance, but her hands were clenched tightly in her lap.

Her continued skittishness was annoying, made doubly so by the fact that when she wasn't acting as though she expected him to fall upon her, she wasn't treating him with the proper respect his station was due, far too casual in her manner of speaking. If he'd been thinking clearly when it happened, he would have laid the line in the sand immediately, but he'd had too much on his mind these past few nights. Somehow, her tiny insurrections didn't make the top of the list. Yet.

No, not when he had so much else to deal with. Although he would have liked to have this Athill business resolved, he was privately glad to have a few days before they could do anything about it. He had a sneaking suspicion that tonight's meeting was going to be one of those tiresome political affairs that winds on and on without anything ever actually being resolved at the end. What he really would have liked to have been doing was addressing the problems they'd been having with the Anarchs lately, but Kindred were notoriously self absorbed; if their own affairs were in order, they saw no reason to trouble themselves over anything else. He thought, as the limo pulled up to the curb of the appointed place, that more than a few of the Camarilla were actually afraid of the thugs, too, which simply wouldn't do. No, he thought, he would certainly have to take steps as soon as he was able.

It was one of the smaller meeting places for the Kindred in the city, a long, low building made of metropolitan grey and black bricks. Several years ago it had been a restaurant that had failed spectacularly when it's owner had built it . . . and then unfortunately failed to pay back the loan he'd received from his Kindred beneficiary. The building, naturally, had been confiscated once the previous owner had been dealt with, and it had since served as a discreet area for discussing business in the community. Sebastian saw curious looks from passing Kine as he got out of the limo; Bartleby, the Ghoul who handled the building's upkeep, said that they still frequently received calls from frustrated mortals trying to book a dinner at the quaint restaurant that was oddly never open to the public.

"Wait. Wait."

Sebastian didn't bother to conceal his irritation as he looked back at Emily where she stood on the steps. She looked nervous, smoothing her hands down over her hips. "What do I do?" she asked. "I mean . . . do I just stand there besides you, or, uh . . . "

"Follow me at a distance, keep silent, keep out of the way." Sebastian replied impatiently.

"What if another vam . . . Kindred wants to talk to me?"

Usually Ghouls, at least proper ones, were carefully chosen and educated, even if it was more for keeping them out from underfoot than their own benefit. Emily, however, had been thrust rather unceremoniously into this new life a short while ago, and she was very much a lamb amoung the lions. He had to force himself to keep this in mind. It wouldn't do to react to her honest ignorance with blind violence out of sheer frustration like an animal.

"They won't. The Kindred here tonight are a vainglorious lot, and most of them will consider you beneath their notice. If someone speaks to you, be polite, but do not volunteer nor provide any other information beyond your first name. Simply tell them you work for me and that will be sufficient." He paused, studying her face. "Nobody will try to feed from you."

"That's not what I was worried about." she replied, but she was a poor liar. He read the relief in her posture as well as in her gaze. She followed him into the building thereafter without complaint, silent as a ghost on his heels. If a nervous one.

Once inside, Sebastian forgot all about her.

It wasn't just the ambiance, although there was plenty of that. Molly O'Malley had organised the event, and her taste was more sombre than extravagant. It was a long, low room entirely done in the sort of rich, mahogany panelling you couldn't get unless you could tell your architect "Money is no object" and honestly mean it. The buttery-soft looking wood caught and held the light of dozens of thin, tapered candles placed strategically throughout the room, standing in plain silver holders atop the furniture. The skylight above let in another measure of moonlight, cold and silvery to contrast the candlight. There were maybe a dozen of the city's more prominent Kindred present, standing like pale statues throughout the room appraising one another. Despite the lack of warmth in their features, Sebastian felt himself relax a little nonetheless.

Because of the nature of the face he was required to present to the world in order to keep his legitimate business ventures afloat, he spent more time than he would have liked in the company of the kine. A constant stream of eager, twitching faces, sweaty palms, and bad teeth bared in plastic smiles slick with saliva that he faced each day left him feeling as though someone was sitting in his head with a piece of sandpaper and was patiently rubbing it back and forth over his nerves. There were times when he would have liked nothing better than to reach across his desk at the end of a particularily trying business night and cheerfully throttle whatever poor Kine happened to be sitting in the opposite chair.

Sometimes he forgot how quiet it could be, around others of his kind. The Kindred were free of the most trying traits of the Kine, and even his least favourite amoung them was suddenly like welcoming an old friend after dealing with the Kine for so long.

Well. Perhaps 'old friend' was stretching the truth a bit.

Particularily where Maximillian Strauss, gliding forward on silent feet, was concerned.

Molly O'Malley was with him, and this time wearing a silk cocktail dress of deepest chocolate fabric that whispered when she bowed before him. "Sire, it's my pleasure to see you."

"My Prince." Strauss had a low, soft, but oleaginous voice that never failed to set Sebastian's teeth on edge. Of all of the Camarilla, Strauss had been the most private in his estimations of Sebastian's leadership, but the Prince felt the Tremere's veiled mockery and scorn more sharply than the other Kindred probably thought. "How good of you to join us this evening. You must be very busy . . . I see you have had to take on another Ghoul to help with your affairs."

"I am always pleased to have someone competent in my organisation, Maximillian." Sebastian replied evasively. A glance at Emily showed she had chosen a bland yet polite poker face and was studiously not meeting anyone's gaze. She looked, for all the world, like any other servitor; attentive, respectful, silent. He made a mental note to impress this upon her later. "You have the same problems, I'm sure. It must be difficult for you, keeping the collapse of your chantry at bay every night."

It was a thinly concealed barb, and Sebastian saw Molly's eyes dart keenly back and forth between them, anticipating conflict. Sebastian held his smile. Part of the reason he'd survived as long as he had was because he knew better than to let people get under his skin, so to speak, and especially not to let them know when they did. By contrast, the Tremere, for all his supposed upbringing and knowledge, was perhaps one of the more easily angered Kindred Sebastian had known.

He wasn't disappointed this time either. One corner of Maximillian's mouth twitched, but that perfect socialite smile might as well have been nailed in place. "I manage." he said, only somewhat stiffly.

They might have gone on in that fashion for quite some time if not for the sudden appearance of another Kindred. Or perhaps he'd been there all along and had simply stood so still, so silently, Sebastian had looked right past him and he was only now making his presence known. In this case, it wasn't unlikely.

Dominic DuPre was a tall, painfully thin man – so much so one almost expected him to rattle when he walked, like wind through the bare branches of a tree. The angles of his legs and arms so severe it was hard to believe they didn't slice like knives through the expensive, slate-gray suit he was wearing. His face was drawn, dark red hair slicked back from a high forehead, and yet he was still an oddly handsome man, as though the weight of his position and his grave nature were greater than the sum of his parts. Or, more than likely, it was the simple fascination of the Toreador nature.

"Sebastian." Dominic's voice was as low and morose as ever. Sebastian had known him for years and he'd never sounded any different. How he managed to inspire any sort of loyalty or enthusiasm in his followers was beyond Sebastian's ken. "I didn't think you'd come."

"Of course I came. I attend to the needs of our society whenever they arise, Dominic."

"Indeed." the other vampire agreed with a heavy sigh, as though the mere thought of such burden pained him. He glanced past Sebastian to where Emily stood, then dismissed her in the span of a glance; it took more than a Ghoul to pique the curiosity of a Kindred, especially when they were so fleeting in their employment. "I do try to do my part, you know."

"Of course, Dominic," Sebastian said impatiently, trying to head off what he knew was coming, "you know I find you -- "

"Unfortunately, with the wolves at my door on a nightly basis, I'm uncertain how long I will be able to continue to be of service to you. But until then, I remain your humble servant."

Sebastian grimaced, turned it into a painful looking commiserating smile at the last moment. It was unavoidable; the older a particular Kindred became, the more neurotic they tended to become, and Dominic was perhaps one of the oldest in the room. What was annoying about it wasn't the certainty that the Garou were after him; it was his apparent utter compliance with what he thought was his fate. He truly believed the werewolves were coming for him, and he seemed disinclined to actually do anything about it. He spoke with weary, resigned detachment, and there were times when Sebastian felt like slapping him for it.

"And how are you this evening, Miss Roivas?" Molly said, voice a rich purr.

Without turning his head, Sebastian glanced to the left and found Emily watching him. His mouth tightened slightly. He could read the stubborness in her gaze like a book, and he glared at her. She wouldn't be the first woman to have an almost instinctual dislike of Molly O'Malley, but unlike others, Emily could find herself dead for whatever catty little remark she might be thinking of indulging in. It was a complicated thought to put into just a look, but he must have done at least a decent job of it, for she suddenly went several shades paler, cut her eyes away, and swallowed heavily.

Whatever Emily had been about to say was cut off by the sound of something heavy landing on the roof.

Emily gasped and jerked in surprise, but the only movement the Kindred made was to turn their heads upwards almost in silent unison. The ceiling was perhaps fifteen feet above their heads, dominated by a modern square skylight, and in the dead center lay a dark mass that writhed once, and then lay still. Footsteps sounded, rapid and heavy across the roof, and the unlit chandelier jingled once, then fell silent.

If he'd had breath, Sebastian might have been holding it. They all would. Every face was turned towards the ceiling, every unblinking eye watching the fine webwork of cracks appearing throughout the glass around the dark mass, transfixed. The sound was unnaturally loud in the stillness, like someone stepping very slowly and deliberately on thin ice with all their weight.

Sebastian wondered almost dreamily who the assassination would be aimed at this time.

And then the skylight broke in and the bodies hit the floor.


End file.
